Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.

There is health in table talk and nursery play. We must wear old shoes and have aunts and cousins.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.

A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene.

Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

A scholar is a man with his inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home and look up his manuscripts to know.