It is very possible to practise moderation in some things, in drink and the like--to restrain the appetites--but can a man restrain the affections of his mind, and tell them, so far you shall go, and no farther?
Alas, no! for the mind is a subtle principle, and cannot be confined.

The winds may be imprisoned; Homer says that Odysseus carried certain winds in his ship, confined in leathern bags, but Homer never speaks of confining the affections.

It were but right that those who exhort us against inordinate affections, and setting our hearts too much upon the world and its vanities, would tell us how to avoid doing so.
"I need scarcely tell you, that no sooner did I become an author, than I gave myself up immoderately to my vocation.

It became my idol, and, as a necessary consequence, it has proved a source of misery and disquietude to me, instead of pleasure and blessing.

I had trouble enough in writing my first work, and I was not long in discovering that it was one thing to write a stirring and spirited address to a set of county electors, and another widely different to produce a work at all calculated to make an impression upon the great world.