-I contrived the following method for conducting that examination. I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day. I crossed these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the virtues, on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day.
-I determined to give a week's strict attention to each of the virtues successively.
-Every part of my business should have its allotted time, one page in my little book contained the following scheme of employment for the twenty-four hours of a natural day.
-My scheme of order gave me the most trouble.
-On the whole, although I never arrived at the perfection, I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.
-No qualities were so likely to make a poor's man fortune as those of probity and integrity.
-When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and on showing him immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases and circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or seemed to be some difference.
-The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.
-I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points.
-In reality, there is, perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.
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