Perhaps those, who, trembling most, maintain a dignity in their fate, are the bravest: resolution on reflection is real courage.

The sure way of judging whether our first thoughts are judicious, is to sleep on them. If they appear of the same force the next morning as they did over night, and if good nature ratifies what good sense approves, we may be pretty sure we are in the right.

I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense--but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd--for sense cannot be counterfeited.

Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.

The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger.

In the drawing room [of the Queen's palace] hung a Venus and Cupid by Michaelangelo, in which, instead of a bit of drapery, the painter has placed Cupid's foot between Venus's thighs. Queen Caroline asked General Guise, an old connoisseur, if it was not a very fine piece? He replied "Madam, the painter was a fool, for he has placed the foot where the hand should be.

I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.