"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.

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

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice.

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.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice.

This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.