How few there are who are furnished with abilities sufficient to recommend their actions to the admiration of the world, and distinguish themselves from the rest of mankind.

Such is the weakness of our nature, that when men are a little exalted in their condition they immediately conceive they have additional senses, and their capacities enlarged not only above other men, but above human comprehension itself.

It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.

The praise of an ignorant man is only good-will, and you should receive his kindness as he is a good neighbor in society, and not as a good judge of your actions in point of fame and reputation.

It has been a sort of maxim, that the greatest art is to conceal art; but I know not how, among some people we meet with, their greatest cunning is to appear cunning.

Many take pleasure in spreading abroad the weakness of an exalted character.

Conversation never sits easier upon us than when we now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laughter, which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversation.