I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.

A learned parson, rusting in his cell at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what ; and yet, unfortunately, he knows nothing of man... He views man as he does colours in Sir Isaac Newton's prism, where only the capital ones are seen; but an experienced dyer knows all their various shades and gradations, together with the result of their several mixtures.

Speak the language of the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.

A joker is near akin to a buffoon; and neither of them is the least related to wit.

I assisted at the birth of that most significant word "flirtation," which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world.

I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.

The only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is, doubtless, a separation.