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

The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.

A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.

The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved; and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive.

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.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.

Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature.