Compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable, than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind, as that in which the stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, anguish as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot.

There are so few who can grow old with a good grace.

Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it.

Pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox.

Simplicity of all things is the hardest to be copy.

The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men's words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.

A woman seldom writes her mind but in her postscript