A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.

Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.

There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.

A man who does not endeavour to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary.

We go on a journey to be free of all impediments; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others

The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.

A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.