There is a pride, a self-love, in human minds that will seldom be kept so low as to make men and women humbler than they ought to be.

The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?

What a world is this! What is there in it desirable? The good we hope for so strangely mixed, that one knows not what to wish for!And one half of mankind tormenting the other, and being tormented themselves in tormenting!

Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.

Men will bear many things from a kept mistress, which they would not bear from a wife.

A Stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play.

The coyest maids make the fondest wives.