There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.

The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms.

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.

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.

Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.