The plainest man that can convince a woman that he is really in love with her has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce no such conviction. For the love of woman is a shoot, not a seed, and flourishes most vigorously only when ingrafted on that love which is rooted in the breast of another.

Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give.

It is always easy to shut a book, but not quite so easy to get rid of a lettered coxcomb.

A lady of fashion will sooner excuse a freedom flowing from admiration than a slight resulting from indifference.

We strive as hard to hide our hearts from ourselves as from others, and always with more success; for in deciding upon our own case we are both judge, jury, and executioner, and where sophistry cannot overcome the first, or flattery the second, self-love is always ready to defeat the sentence by bribing the third.

Injuries accompanied with insults are never forgiven: all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest.

Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.