Mutual cowardice keeps us in peace.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

But, perhaps, the flatterer is not often detected; for an honest mind is not apt to suspect, and no one exerts the power of discernment with much vigour when selflove favors the deceit.

We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is discovered that we can have no more.

Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not to talk; when they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous; but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.