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.

Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.

Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct--never to show the least symptom of resentment, which you cannot, to a certain degree, gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike.

Sexual intercourse is a grossly overrated pastime; the position is undignified, the pleasure momentary and the consequences damnable.

Very ugly or very beautiful women should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty.

In the course of the world, a man must very often put on an easy, frank countenance, upon very disagreeable occasions; he must seem pleased, when he is very much otherwise; he must be able to accost and receive with smiles, those whom he would much rather meet with swords.

Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.