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

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.

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

What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.

Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.

Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.