I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.

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

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.

The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend, is the moment you receive them. Then the warmth of friendship, and the intelligence received, most forcibly cooperate.

Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.

The making presents to a lady one addresses is like throwing armor into an enemy's camp, with a resolution to recover it.

Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.