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.

Formality is sufficiently revenged upon the world for being so unreasonably laughed at; it is destroyed, it is true, but it hath the spiteful satisfaction of seeing everything destroyed with it.

Power is so apt to be insolent and Liberty to be saucy, that they are seldom upon good Terms.

If none were to have Liberty but those who understand what it is, there would not be many freed Men in the world.

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

The several sorts of religion in the world are little more than so many spiritual monopolies.