A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.

Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.

Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.

Wise people may say what they will, but one passion is never cured by another.

Dancing is, in itself, a very trifling and silly thing: but it is one of those established follies to which people of sense are sometimes obliged to conform; and then they should be able to do it well. And though I would not have you a dancer, yet, when you do dance, I would have you dance well, as I would have you do everything you do well.

Nothing is more dissimilar than natural and acquired politeness. The first consists in a willing abnegation of self; the second in a compelled recollection of others.