Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.

I have seen many people, who while you are speaking to them, instead, of looking at, and attending to you, fix their eyes upon the ceiling, or some other part of the room, look out of the window, play with a dog, twirl their snuff-box, or pick their nose. Nothing discovers a little, futile, frivolous mind more than this, and nothing is so offensively ill-bred.

Ridicule is the best test of truth.

The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.

If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.

Every man becomes, to a certain degree, what the people he generally converses with are.

There is time enough for everything in the course of the day if you do but one thing once; but there is not time enough in the year if you will do two things at a time.