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

Study the heart and the mind of man, and begin with your own. Meditation and reflection must lay the foundation of that knowledge, but experience and practice must, and alone can, complete it.

Remember that the wit, humour, and jokes of most mixed companies are local. They thrive in that particular soil, but will not often bear transplanting.

I am in the pitiable situation of feeling all the force of temptation without having the strength to succumb to it.

Most people have ears, but few have judgment; tickle those ears, and depend upon it, you will catch their judgments, such as they are.

Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.

Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.