Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.

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

The worst old age is that of the mind.

Elegance is something more than ease; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.

Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense?

Truth from the mouth of an honest man and severity from a good-natured man have a double effect.

The more you do, the more you can do.