Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.

By retaliating our sufferings on the heads of those we love, we get rid of a present uneasiness and incur lasting remorse. With the accomplishment of our revenge our fondness returns; so that we feel the injury we have done them, even more than they do.

One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it.

The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.

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

Comedy naturally wears itself out - destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.

Within my heart is lurking suspicion, and base fear, and shame and hate; but above all, tyrannous love sits throned, crowned with her graces, silent and in tears.