When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.

Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.

Jealousy is sustained as often by pride as by affection.

That which we acquire with the most difficulty we retain the longest; as those who have earned a fortune are usually more careful of it than those who have inherited one.

That politeness which we put on, in order to keep the assuming and the presumptuous at a proper distance will generally succeed. But it sometimes happens that these obtrusive characters are on such excellent terms with themselves that they put down this very politeness to the score of their own great merits and high pretensions, meeting the coldness of our reserve with a ridiculous condescension of familiarity, in order to set us at ease with ourselves.

Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right without them.

Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.