Richard francis

[Samuel Sewall is America's counterpart to his slightly older contemporary, Samuel Pepys. Both men were essentially humane and humorous pragmatists, honest about themselves and endlessly inquisitive about what makes other people tick. Both started keeping diaries in the 1660s. Sewall, unlike Pepys, kept his up for more than 50 years, filling it with frank, earthy, often touching detail:] We can actually feel life's slither as it slides through our fingers, and his, ... Sewall was inventing what it is to be a private citizen.

By indignities men come to dignities.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Knowledge itself is power

Knowledge is power.