I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

Unlike my subject will I frame my song, It shall be witty and it shan't be long.

Distrust those who love you extremely upon a slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason.

Observe any meetings of people, and you will always find their eagerness and impetuosity rise or fall in proportion to their numbers.

There is a sort of veteran women of condition, who, having lived always in the grand mode, and having possibly had some gallantries, together with the experience of five and twenty or thirty years, form a young fellow better than all the rules that can be given him.

To govern mankind, one must not overrate them.

Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men; their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.