Good-humor will sometimes conquer ill-humor, but ill-humor will conquer it oftener; and for this plain reason, good-humor must operate on generosity, ill-humor on meanness.

Out of mind as soon as out of sight.

Whatever natural right men may have to freedom and independency, it is manifest that some men have a natural ascendency over others.

Vanity is the poison of agreeableness; yet as poison, when artfully and properly applied, has a salutary effect in medicine, so has vanity in the commerce and society of the world.

Our companions please us less from the charms we find in their conversation than from those they find in ours.

Weak men often from the very principle of their weakness derive a certain susceptibility; delicacy and taste which render them, in those particulars, much superior to men of stronger and more consistent minds, who laugh at them.

The world is an excellent judge in general, but a very bad one in particular.