Persons in great stations have seldom their true character drawn till several years after their death. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunities of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.

Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.

There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.

Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man.

Marriage enlarges the scene of our happiness and miseries. A marriage of love is pleasant; a marriage of interest, easy; and a marriage where both meet, happy. A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life.

A friend exaggerates a man's virtues; an enemy inflames his crimes.