We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.

Persons who undertake to pry into, or cleanse out all the filth of a common sewer, either cannot have very nice noses, or will soon lose them.

The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.

A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.

No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.