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.

When you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him where that passion is concerned.

Judgment is not upon all occasions required, but discretion always is.

I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures, for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavour to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be.

Elegance of manner is the outgrowth of refined and exalted sense.

Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but let them feel at the same time the steadiness of your just resentment for there is a great difference between bearing malice, which is always ungenerous, and a resolute self-defense which is ever prudent and justifiable.

In your friendships and in your enmities let your confidence and your hostilities have certain bounds; make not the former dangerous, nor the latter irreconcilable. There are strange vicissitudes in business.