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

Physical ills are the taxes laid upon this wretched life; some are taxed higher, and some lower, but all pay something.

The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding; and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men's company, can only be acquired in women's.

Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.

If you will please people, you must please them in their own way; and as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are.

Were you to converse with a king, you ought to be as easy and unembarrassed as with your own valet-de chambre; but yet every look,word, and action should imply the utmost respect.... You must wait till you are spoken to; you must receive, not give, the subject of conversation, and you must even take care that the given subject of such conversation do not lead you into any impropriety.

Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.