The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.

Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it; most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.

The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding; and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men's company, can only be acquired in women's.

Cautiously avoid speaking of the domestic affairs either of yourself, or of other people. Yours are nothing to them but tedious gossip; and theirs are nothing to you.

Anne of Austria (with great submission to a Crowned Head do I say it) was a B----. She had spirit and courage without parts, devotion without common morality, and lewdness without tenderness either to justify or to dignify it. Her two sons were no more Lewis the Thirteen's than they were mine.

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.