Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial, life; returns are equally expected for both.

Artichoke: That vegetable of which one has more at the finish than at the start of dinner.

Experience only can teach men not to prefer what strikes them for the present moment, to what will have much greater weight with the them hereafter.

Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.

Most people have ears, but few have judgment; tickle those ears, and depend upon it, you will catch their judgments, such as they are.

The late Président de Montesquieu told me that he knew how to be blind--he had been so for such a long time--but I swear that I do not know how to be deaf: I cannot get used to it, and I am as humiliated and distressed by it today as I was during the first week. No philosophy in the world can palliate deafness.

Character must be kept bright as well as clean.