Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person.

Words are the dress of thoughts; which should no more be presented in rags, tatters, and dirt than your person should.

In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak and speak with dignity too.

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 sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

Next to clothes being fine, they should be well made, and worn easily; for a man is only the less genteel for a fine coat, if, in wearing it, he shows a regard for it, and is not as easy in it as if it was a plain one.

Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices thatmay accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.