Give nobly to indigent merit, and do not refuse your charity even to those who have not merit but their misery.

If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.

Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.

To me it appears strange that the men against whom I should be enabled to bring an action for laying a little dirt at my door, may with impunity drive by it half-a-dozen calves, with their tails lopped close to their bodies and their hinder parts covered with blood.

The vulgar only laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh.

The only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is, doubtless, a separation.

Six, or at most seven, hours' sleep is, for a constancy, as much as you or anybody else can want; more is only laziness and dozing, and is, I am persuaded, both unwholesome and stupefying.