Others proclaim the infirmities of a great man with satisfaction and complacence, if they discover none of the like in themselves.

Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.

I believe that everyone, some time or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters; in which case the invention prompts so readily that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the composition of another.

Complaisance renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable.

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

Two persons who have chosen each other out of all the species with a design to be each other's mutual comfort and entertainment have, in that action, bound themselves to be good-humored, affable, discreet, forgiving, patient, and joyful, with respect to each other's frailties and perfections, to the end of their lives.

A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy.