Take here the grand secret; if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none, and court mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion.

The true friend of truth and good loves them under all forms, but he loves them most under the most simple form.

Avoid connecting yourself with characters whose good and bad sides are unmixed and have not fermented together; they resemble vials of vinegar and oil; or palletts set with colors; they are either excellent at home and insufferable abroad, or intolerable within doors and excellent in public; they are unfit for friendship, merely because their stamina, their ingredients of character are too single, too much apart; let them be finely ground up with each other, and they are incomparable.

He surely is most in need of another's patience, who has none of his own.

Injustice arises either from precipitation, or indolence, or from a mixture of both. - The rapid and slow are seldom just; the unjust wait either not at all, or wait too long.

Don't speak evil of someone if you don't know for certain, and if you do know ask yourself, why am I telling it?

When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge; love simple ones as you would the native roses on your cheek.