It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.

Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to cover the defects of the mind.

Without humility, we keep all our defects; and they are only crusted over by pride, which conceals them from others, and often from ourselves.

Even the most disinterested love is, after all, but a kind of bargain, in which self-love always proposes to be the gainer one wayor another.

Politeness is a desire to be treated politely, and to be esteemed polite oneself.

In the human heart one generation of passions follows another; from the ashes of one springs the spark of the next.

Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.