Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men; their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.

Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.

The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it.

Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you.... Do not mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to their birth; that is the least consideration; but I mean with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them.

Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.

People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.

I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments.