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

Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way through the world.

Six, or at most seven, hours' sleep is, for a constancy, as much as you or anybody else can want; more is only laziness and dozing, and is, I am persuaded, both unwholesome and stupefying.

Everything is worth seeing once, and the more one sees the less one either wonders or admires.

It is often more necessary to conceal contempt than resentment; the former is never forgiven, but the later is sometimes forgotten.

A young fellow ought to be wiser than he should seem to be; and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not.

The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.