To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.

Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.

Women never reason, or, if they do, they either draw correct inferences from wrong premises, or wrong inferences from correct premises; and they always poke the fire from the top.

Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves.

The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.

Falsehood is difficult to be maintained. When the materials of a building are solid blocks of stone, very rude architecture will suffice; but a structure of rotten materials needs the most careful adjustment to make it stand at all.