Half the business is done, when one has gained the heart and the affections of those with whom one is to transact it.

Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.

Experience only can teach men not to prefer what strikes them for the present moment, to what will have much greater weight with the them hereafter.

I have seen many people, who while you are speaking to them, instead, of looking at, and attending to you, fix their eyes upon the ceiling, or some other part of the room, look out of the window, play with a dog, twirl their snuff-box, or pick their nose. Nothing discovers a little, futile, frivolous mind more than this, and nothing is so offensively ill-bred.

If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.

In the ordinary course of things, how many succeed in society merely by virtue of their manners, while others, however meritorious, fail through lack of them? After all, it's only barbarians who wear uncut precious stones.

Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.