Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.

I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.

There seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done.

Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.

Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.

It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.