The memory is perpetually looking back when we have nothing present to entertain us. It is like those repositories in animals that are filled with food, on which they may ruminate when their present pastures fail.

Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them.

There is a sort of economy in Providence that one shall excel where another is defective, in order to make men more useful to each other, and mix them in society.

It is always to be understood that a lady takes all you detract from the rest of her sex to be a gift to her.

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

The woman that deliberates is lost.

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.