If you will please people, you must please them in their own way; and as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are.

To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.

Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes.

It is hard to say which is the greatest fool: he who tells the whole truth, or he who tells no truth at all. Character is as necessary in business as in trade. No man can deceive often in either.

Next to doing things that deserve to be written, nothing gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure than to write things that deserve to be read.

Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.

Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever. It implies a discovery of weakness, which we are more careful to conceal than a crime. Many a man will confess his crimes to a friend; but I never knew a man that would tell his silly weaknesses to his most intimate one.