The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.

No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.

The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.

First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.

The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.

There cannot be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.

To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.