I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency. People's characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life; birth itself does but little.

When misfortunes happen to such as dissent from us in matters of religion, we call them judgments; when to those of our own sect, we call them trials; when to persons neither way distinguished, we are content to attribute them to the settled course of things.

Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.

Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.

Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.

Thanks, oftenest obtrusive.

I hate a style, as I do a garden, that is wholly flat and regular; that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.