Respect is better procured by exacting than soliciting it.

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.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter.

Men and statues that are admired ire an elevated situation have a very different effect upon us when we approach them; the first appear less than we imagined them, the last bigger.

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

True delicacy, as true generosity, is more wounded by an offence from itself--if I may be allowed the expression--than to itself.