How little has situation to do with happiness. The happy individual uses their intelligence to realise things could be worse and therefore is grateful and happy. The unhappy individual does the opposite!

Generosity without delicacy, like wit without judgment, generally gives as much pain as pleasure.

To despise riches, may, indeed, be philosophic, but to dispense them worthily, must surely be more beneficial to mankind.

For my part, I confess I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking about and finding out one's acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage. One merely comes to meet one's friends, and show that one's alive.

There's no nation under the sun can beat the English for ill-politeness: for my part, I hate the very sight of them; and so I shall only just visit a person of quality or two of my particular acquaintance, and then I shall go back again to France.

O, we all acknowledge our faults, now; 'tis the mode of the day: but the acknowledgment passes for current payment; and therefore we never amend them.

an old woman ... is a person who has no sense of decency; if once she takes to living, the devil himself can't get rid of her.