The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest of the nation.

The Triumph of Wit is to make your good Nature subdue your Censure; to be quick in seeing Faults, and slow in exposing them. You are to consider, that the invisible thing called a Good Name, is made up of the Breath of Numbers that speak well of you; so that if by a disobliging Word you silence the meanest, the Gale will be less strong which is to bear up your Esteem.

I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford.

Nothing would more contribute to make a man wise than to have always an enemy in his view.

Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is very good company by the way.

True merit, like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes.

Friendship cannot live with ceremony, nor without civility.