As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labor.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

The authour who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegances out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be censured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he digs his marble out of the same quarry, squares his stones by the same art, and unites them in columns of the same orders.

Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities, superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world; and, whatever apparent disadvantages he may suffer in the comparison with others, he has some invisible distinctions, some latent reserve of excellence, which he throws into the balance, and by which he generally fancies that it is turned in his favour.

Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.

The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.

This man [Chesterfield], I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords.