Oh, we are ridiculous animals; and if the angels have any fun in them, how we must divert them!

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.

Shakespeare had no tutors but nature and genius. He caught his faults from the bad taste of his contemporaries. In an age still less civilized Shakespeare might have been wilder, but would not have been vulgar.

I do not dislike the French from the vulgar antipathy between neighboring nations, but for their insolent and unfounded air of superiority.

I have known men of valor cowards to their wives.

Men are often capable of greater things than they perform - They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.

I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company.