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.

Unbecoming forwardness oftener proceeds from ignorance than impudence.

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

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

I hardly know a sight that raises one's indignation more than that of an enlarged soul joined to a contracted fortune; unless it be that so much more common one, of a contracted soul joined to an enlarged fortune.

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

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