The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test you may pronounceit true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been a Punn.

There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

Peaceable times are the best to live in, though not so proper to furnish materials for a writer.

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.

As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.

The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.