Nothing is so contemptible as that affectation of wisdom, which some display, by universal incredulity.

The Europeans are themselves blind who describe fortune without sight. No first-rate beauty ever had finer eyes, or saw more clearly. They who have no other trade but seeking their fortune need never hope to find her; coquette-like, she flies from her close pursuers, and at last fixes on the plodding mechanic who stays at home and minds his business.

She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than the ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes.

The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.

I have seen her and sister cry over a book for an hour together, and they said, they liked the book the better the more it made them cry.

When a person has no need to borrow they find multitudes willing to lend.

Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie.