Second-rate knowledge, and middling talents, carry a man farther at courts, and in the busy part of the world, than superior knowledge and shining parts.

Little vicious minds abound with anger and revenge and are incapable of feeling te pleasure of forgiving their enemies.

Enjoy pleasures, but let them be your own, and then you will taste them.

To govern mankind, one must not overrate them.

Observe any meetings of people, and you will always find their eagerness and impetuosity rise or fall in proportion to their numbers.

In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak and speak with dignity too.

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.