Now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through wit… - Daniel Defoe

He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing - viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches. He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters.

Self-destruction is the effect of cowardice in the highest extreme.

A true-bred merchant is the best gentleman in the nation.