Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice.

When a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.

Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings.

It is often more necessary to conceal contempt than resentment; the former is never forgiven, but the later is sometimes forgotten.

It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.

I heartily wish you, in the plain home-spun style, a great number of happy new years, well employed in forming both your mind andyour manners, to be useful and agreeable to yourself, your country, and your friends.

To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life.