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

Money is the source of the greatest vice, and that nation which is most rich, is most wicked.

Well of all things in the world, I don't suppose anything can be so dreadful as a public wedding--my stars!--I should never be able to support it!

You have sensible women here [in England] but then, they are very devils--censorious, uncharitable, sarcastic--the women in Scotland have twice--thrice their freedom, with all their virtue--and are very conversable and agreeable--their educations are more finished.

I love and honour [Paulus Aemilius, in Plutarch's Lives], for his fondness for his children, which instead of blushing at, he avows and glories in: and that at an age, when almost all the heros and great men thought that to make their children and family a secondary concern, was the first proof of their superiority and greatness of soul.

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.

How little has situation to do with happiness.