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

One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.

The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.

One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.

Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.

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.

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.