Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.

A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.

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

If you are not in fashion, you are nobody.

Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.

I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general; one would think by them, that the whole human species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of Emperors, Kings, Popes, Generals, and Ministers.

To write anything tolerable, the mind must be in a natural, proper disposition; provocatives, in that case, as well as in another,will only produce miserable, abortive performances.