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.

The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and the manner of a gentleman has ease without freedom.

I could wish there were a treaty made between the French and the English theatres, in which both parties should make considerableconcessions. The English ought to give up their notorious violations of the unities, and all their massacres, racks, dead bodies, and mangled carcasses, which they so frequently exhibit upon their stage. The French should engage to have more action, and less declamation, and not to cram and to crowd things together to almost a degree of impossibility from a too scrupulous adherence to the unities.

Fear invites danger; concealed cowards insult known ones.

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.