Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.

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

Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors.

She 's no chicken; she 's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

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

Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?