Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct--never to show the least symptom of resentment, which you cannot, to a certain degree, gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike.

An honest man may really love a pretty girl, but only an idiot marries her merely because she is pretty.

Vulgarism in language is the distinguishing characteristic of bad company, and a bad education. A man of fashion avoids nothing with more care than that. Proverbial expressions, and trite sayings, are the flowers of the rhetoric of vulgar man.

To write anything tolerable, the mind must be in a natural, proper disposition; provocatives, in that case, as well as in another,will only produce miserable, abortive performances.

The rulers of the earth are all worth knowing; they suggest moral reflections: and the respect that one naturally has for God's vice-regents here on earth is greatly increased by acquaintance with them.

Deafness produces bizarre effects, reversing the natural order of things; the interchange of letters is the conversation of the deaf, and the only link with society. I would be in despair, for instance, over seeing you speak, but, instead, I am only too happy to hear you write.

In your friendships and in your enmities let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds; make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business.