It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.

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.

Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.