The Common People Do Not Accurately Adapt

Most Men Think Indistinctly, And Therefore Cannot Speak With Exactness . . .

I Know Not Anything More Pleasant, Or More Instructive, Than To Compare Experience With Expectation, Or To Register From Time To Time The Difference Between Idea And Reality. It Is By This Kind Of Observation That We Grow Daily Less Liable To Be Disappointed.

I Am Not Able To Instruct You. I Can Only Tell That I Have Chosen Wrong. I Have Passed My Time In Study Without Experience; In The Attainment Of Sciences Which Can, For The Most Part, Be But Remotely Useful To Mankind. I Have Purchased Knowledge At The Expense Of All The Common Comforts Of Life: I Have Missed The Endearing Elegance Of Female Friendship, And The Happy Commerce Of Domestic Tenderness.

Credulity Is The Common Failing Of Inexperienced Virtue; And He Who Is Spontaneously Suspicious May Justly Be Charged With Radical Corruption.

Whoever Shall Review His Life, Will Find That The Whole Tenor Of His Conduct Has Been Determined By Some Accident Of No Apparent Moment.