Learn to shrink yourself to the size of the company you are in. Take their tone, whatever it may be, and excell in it if you can;but never pretend to give the tone. A free conversation will no more bear a dictator than a free government will.

It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon.

In business be as able as you can, but do not be cunning; cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity.

There never were, since the creation of the world, two cases exactly parallel.

The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.

A man who tells nothing, or who tells all, will equally have nothing told him.

People will, in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb which says vry justly, 'Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are.'