The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed; if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.

Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes.

Women are all so far Machiavellians that they are never either good or bad by halves; their passions are too strong, and their reason too weak, to do anything with moderation.

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.

A learned parson, rusting in his cell at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what ; and yet, unfortunately, he knows nothing of man... He views man as he does colours in Sir Isaac Newton's prism, where only the capital ones are seen; but an experienced dyer knows all their various shades and gradations, together with the result of their several mixtures.

The most ignorant are the boldest conjecturers.

A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.