Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation.

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.

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

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.

When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.

My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.

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.