I had better have said, let us not think; for thought is painful, even dangerous when carried to excess.

Happy is he who thinks but little, whose ideas are so confined as not to cause the intellectual fever, wearing out the mind and body, and often threatening both with dissolution.

There is a happy medium of intellect, sufficient to convince us that all is good--sufficient to enable us to comprehend that which is revealed, without a vain endeavour to pry into the hidden; to understand the one, and lend our faith unto the other; but when the mind would soar unto the heaven not opened to it, or dive into sealed and dark futurity, how does it return from its several expeditions?
Confused, alarmed, unhappy; willing to rest, yet restless; willing to believe, yet doubting; willing to end its futile travels, yet setting forth anew.

Yet, how is a superior understanding envied! how coveted by all!--a gift which always leads to danger, and often to perdition.
Thank Heaven! I have not been entrusted with one of those thorough-bred, snorting, champing, foaming sort of intellects, which run away with Common Sense, who is jerked from his saddle at the beginning of its wild career.
Mine is a good, steady, useful hack, who trots along the high-road of life, keeping on his own side, and only stumbling a little now and then, when I happen to be careless,--ambitious only to arrive safely at the end of his journey, not to pass by others.
Why am I no longer ambitious?
Once I was, but 'twas when I was young and foolish.

Then methought "It were an easy leap to pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon;" but now I am old and fat, and there is something in fat which chokes or destroys ambition.