The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.

Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.

The worst old age is that of the mind.

A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.

Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong.

Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.

The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.