Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.

Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.

The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.

We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.

What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.