There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory; the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists.

Honor is the most capricious in her rewards. She feeds us with air, and often pulls down our house, to build our monument.

Fortune, like other females, prefers a lover to a master, and submits with impatience to control; but he that wooes her with opportunity and importunity will seldom court her in vain.

Sir Richard Steele has observed, that there is this difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England: the one professes to be infallible, the other to be never in the wrong.

He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank.

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom; he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

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.