A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness; genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art.

The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy. Take common sense quantum sufficit; add a little application to the rules and orders of the House [of Commons], throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness and elegancy of style. Take it for granted that by far the greatest part of mankind neither analyze nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface.

Whoever plays deep must necessarily lose his money or his character.

I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?

The less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.

Wrongs are often forgiven; but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.