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

'Tis happy for him that his Father was born before him.

Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.