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.

If you love music hear it; go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you; but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light; brings him into a great deal of bad company; and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed.

Experience only can teach men not to prefer what strikes them for the present moment, to what will have much greater weight with the them hereafter.

The less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.

In business be as able as you can, but do not be cunning; cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity.

When griefs are genuine, I find, there is nothing more vacuous, more burdensome, or even more impertinent, than letters of consolation.

Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy.