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

The fund of sensible discourse is limited; that of jest and badinerie is infinite.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

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

Anger and the thirst of revenge are a kind of fever; fighting and lawsuits, bleeding,--at least, an evacuation. The latter occasions a dissipation of money; the former, of those fiery spirits which cause a preternatural fermentation.

A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

A fool and his words are soon parted.