The prudence of the best heads is often defeated by tenderness of the best hearts.

...the act of eating,which hath by several wise men been considered as extremely mean and derogatory from the philosophic dignity, must be in some measure performed by the greatest prince, hero, or philosopher upon earth; nay, sometimes Nature hath been so frolicsome as to exact of these dignified characters a much more exorbitant share of this office than she hath obliged those of the lowest orders to perform.

There are those who never reason on what they should do, but what they have done; as if Reason had her eyes behind, and could only see backwards.

Good-breeding is not confined to externals, much less to any particular dress or attitude of the body; it is the art of pleasing, or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse.

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

A broken heart is a distemper which kills many more than is generally imagined, and would have a fair title to a place in the bills of mortality, did it not differ in one instance from all other diseases, namely, that no physicians can cure it.

Beauty may be the object of liking--great qualities of admiration--good ones of esteem--but love only is the object of love.