Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.

The rulers of the earth are all worth knowing; they suggest moral reflections: and the respect that one naturally has for God's vice-regents here on earth is greatly increased by acquaintance with them.

Keep carefully not of all scrapes and quarrels. They lower a character extremely; and are particularly dangerous in France, wherea man is dishonoured by not resenting an affront, and utterly ruined by resenting it.

If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.

Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in mixed company; it should only be treated among a very few people of learning, for mutual instruction. It is too awful and respectable a subject to become a familiar one.

Great merit or great failings will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked, in the general run of the world. Examine yourself, why you like such and such people and dislike such and such others; and you will find that those different sentiments proceed from very slight causes.

Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.