Wit generally succeeds more from being happily addressed than from its native poignancy. A jest, calculated to spread at a gaming-table, may be received with, perfect indifference should it happen to drop in a mackerel-boat.

The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious, but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use.

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 'Twas only when he was off, he was acting.

Processions, cavalcades, and all that fund of gay frippery, furnished out by tailors, barbers, and tire-women, mechanically influence the mind into veneration; an emperor in his nightcap would not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown.

And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all he knew.

Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.