The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.

The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.

There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.

Many a truth is told in jest.

The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms.

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.