This great misfortune, to be incapable of solitude.

I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.

I am told so many ill things of a man, and I see so few in him, that I begin to suspect he has a real but troublesome merit, as being likely to eclipse that of others.

One must laugh before one is happy, or one may die without ever laughing at all.

Friendship * * * is a long time in forming, it is of slow growth, through many trials and months of familiarity.

False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.

A vain man finds his account in speaking good or evil of himself.