To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness; genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art.

Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.

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

Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.

Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorum;at least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.

Instead of giving in to the greatest misfortune that can happen at my age, deafness, I busy myself in searching out all possible compensations, and I apply myself much more to all the amusements that are here within my grasp.