Affectation naturally counterfeits those excellences which are placed at the greatest distance from possibility of attainment, because, knowing our own defects, we eagerly endeavor to supply them with artificial excellence.

A fallible being will fail somewhere.

No, Sir, you will have much more influence by giving or lending money where it is wanted, than by hospitality.

Apologies are seldom of any use.

I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.

It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.

If we require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honor.