A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.
Children sweeten labours. But they make misfortune more bitter. They increase the care of life. But they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts. But memory, merit and noble works are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.
...neither is it possible to discover the more remote and deeper parts of any science, if you stand but upon the level of the same science, and ascend not to a higher science.