What a rare gift, by the by, is that of manners! how difficult to define, how much more difficult to impart! Better for a man to possess them than wealth, beauty, or talent; they will more than supply all.

Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.

More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye.

At court one becomes a sort of human ant eater, and learns to catch one's prey by one's tongue.

The same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains.

Fame confers a rank above that of gentleman and of kings. As soon as she issues her patent of nobility, it matters not a straw whether the recipient be the son of a Bourbon or of a tallow-chandler.

A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel.