I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.

What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.

The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.