The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.

When I reflect upon what I have seen, what I have heard, what I have done, I can hardly persuade myself that all that frivolous hurry and bustle and pleasure of the world had any reality; and I look on what has passed as one of those wild dreams which opium occasions, and I by no means wish to repeat the nauseous dose for the sake of the fugitive illusion.

I assisted at the birth of that most significant word "flirtation," which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world.

Great merit, or great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked in the general run of the world.

It may be objected, that I am now recommending dissimulation to you; I both own and justify it. It has been long said: Qui nescitdissimular nescit regnare: I go still farther, and say, that without some dissimulation, no business can be carried on at all.

I would have all intoleration intolerated in its turn.

If you will please people, you must please them in their own way; and as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are.