Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language.
Laurence SternePlutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility, and virtue;--that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman's life both glorious and happy.
Laurence SterneI am persuaded ... that both man and woman bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.
Laurence Sterne