When griefs are genuine, I find, there is nothing more vacuous, more burdensome, or even more impertinent, than letters of consolation.

Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men; their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest: but there is seldom one in which a man should tell it all.

Our self-love is mortified, when we think our opinions, and even our tastes, customs, and dresses, either arraigned or condemned;as, on the contrary, it is tickled and flattered by approbation.

Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison.

In the ordinary course of things, how many succeed in society merely by virtue of their manners, while others, however meritorious, fail through lack of them? After all, it's only barbarians who wear uncut precious stones.