To Expect An Author To

There Are Persons Who Are Never Easy Unless They Are Putting Your Books And Papers In Order--that Is, According To Their Notions Of The Matter--and Hide Things Lest They Should Be Lost, Where Neither The Owner Nor Anybody Else Can Find Them. This Is A Sort Of Magpie Faculty. If Anything Is Left Where You Want It, It Is Called Litter. There Is A Pedantry In Housewifery, As Well As In The Gravest Concerns. Abraham Tucker Complained That Whenever His Maid Servant Had Been In His Library, He Could Not See Comfortably To Work Again For Several Days.

When One Can Do Better Than Everyone Else In The Same Walk, One Does Not Make Any Very Painful Exertions To Outdo Oneself. The Progress Of Improvement Ceases Nearly At The Point Where Competition Ends.

The Soil Of Friendship Is Worn Out With Constant Use. Habit May Still Attach Us To Each Other, But We Feel Ourselves Fettered By It. Old Friends Might Be Compared To Old Married People Without The Tie Of Children.

Liberty Is The Only True Riches: Of All The Rest We Are At Once The Masters And The Slaves.

There Is A Secret Pride In Every Human Heart That Revolts At Tyranny. You May Order And Drive An Individual, But You Cannot Make Him Respect You.