Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.

Fear invites danger; concealed cowards insult known ones.

A certain degree of fear produces the same effects as rashness.

A man who tells nothing, or who tells all, will equally have nothing told him.

Real merit of any kind cannot long be concealed; it will be discovered, and nothing can depreciate it but a man exhibiting it himself. It may not always be rewarded as it ought; but it will always be known.

I could wish there were a treaty made between the French and the English theatres, in which both parties should make considerableconcessions. The English ought to give up their notorious violations of the unities, and all their massacres, racks, dead bodies, and mangled carcasses, which they so frequently exhibit upon their stage. The French should engage to have more action, and less declamation, and not to cram and to crowd things together to almost a degree of impossibility from a too scrupulous adherence to the unities.

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.