In our corrupted state, common weaknesses and defects contribute more towards the reconciling us to one another than all the precepts of the philosophers and divines.

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

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.

A man that steps aside from the world and has leisure to observe it without interest and design, thinks all mankind as mad as they think him.

A man that should call everything by its right name would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy.

There is an accumulative cruelty in a number of men, though none in particular are ill natured.

The more arguments you win, the less friends you will have