A lively and agreeable man has not only the merit of liveliness and agreeableness himself, but that also of awakening them in 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.

Some characters are like some bodies in chemistry; very good, perhaps, in themselves, yet fly off and refuse the least conjunction with each other.

Out of mind as soon as out of sight.

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

Despair gives the shocking ease to the mind that a mortification gives to the body.

Avarice starves its possessor to fatten those who come after, and who are eagerly awaiting the demise of the accumulator.