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

Amid the most mercenary ages it is but a secondary sort of admiration that is bestowed upon magnificence.

Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

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.

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.

Some men use no other means to acquire respect than by insisting on it; and it sometimes answers their purpose, as it does a highwayman's in regard to money.