Take the tone of the company you are in...

I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.

No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business; and few people do business well, who do nothing else.

A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.

Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.

Many young people adopt pleasures for which they have not the least taste, only because they are called by that name.... You mustallow that drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scraps, leaves you penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is another most exquisite pleasure, is it not? As to running after women, the consequences of that vice are only the loss of one's nose, the total destruction of health, and, not unfrequently, the being run through the body.

In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak and speak with dignity too.