If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.

Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.

An honest man may really love a pretty girl, but only an idiot marries her merely because she is pretty.

Arbitrary power has seldom... been introduced in any country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step.

Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.

Talk often, but never long; in that case, if you do not please, at least you are sure not to tire your hearers. Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company; this being one of the few cases in which people do not care to be treated, every one being fully convinced that he has wherewithal to pay.

I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general; one would think by them, that the whole human species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of Emperors, Kings, Popes, Generals, and Ministers.