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.

Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.

Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes.

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.

A young fellow ought to be wiser than he should seem to be; and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not.

Dancing is, in itself, a very trifling and silly thing: but it is one of those established follies to which people of sense are sometimes obliged to conform; and then they should be able to do it well. And though I would not have you a dancer, yet, when you do dance, I would have you dance well, as I would have you do everything you do well.

An honest man may really love a pretty girl, but only an idiot marries her merely because she is pretty.