A man had rather have a hundred lies told of him than one truth which he does not wish should be told.

Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.

Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.

Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust.

Men are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes.

Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them; and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united.

When a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness, and palliation of every fault. We recollect a thousand endearments, which before glided off our minds without impression, a thousand favors unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed; and wish, vainly wish, for his return, not so much that we may receive as that we may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never understood.