There never were, since the creation of the world, two cases exactly parallel.

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.

Anne of Austria (with great submission to a Crowned Head do I say it) was a B----. She had spirit and courage without parts, devotion without common morality, and lewdness without tenderness either to justify or to dignify it. Her two sons were no more Lewis the Thirteen's than they were mine.

Gold and silver are but merchandise, as well as cloth or linen; and that nation that buys the least, and sells the most, must always have the most money.

When a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.

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

Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.