Jesting is often only indigence of intellect.
Rarely do they appear great before their valets.
One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.
You think him to be your dupe; if he feigns to be so who is the greater dupe, he or you?
A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.
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.