Idleness and constancy fix the mind to what it finds easy and agreeable. This habit always confines and cramps up our knowledge; and no one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go.

Female gossips are generally actuated by active ignorance.

Gratitude is like credit; it is the backbone of our relations; frequently we pay our debts not because equity demands that we should, but to facilitate future loans.

There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.

The most sure method of subjecting yourself to be deceived is to consider yourself more cunning than others.

What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honor of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.

We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.