There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.

Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.

Speak the language of the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.

To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life.

No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint.

I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.

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