A seeming ignorance is very often a most necessary part of worldly knowledge. It is, for instance, commonly advisable to seem ignorant of what people offer to tell you; and when they say, Have not you heard of such a thing? to answer No, and to let them go on, though you know it already.

Few fathers care much for their sons, or at least, most of them care more for their money. Of those who really love their sons, few know how to do it.

A rake is a composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful vices; they all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his fortune; while wine and the pox content which shall soonest and most effectually destroy his constitution.

Women especially as to be talked to as below men, and above children.

An able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions. He is neither hot nor timid.

Unlike my subject will I frame my song, It shall be witty and it shan't be long.

Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person.