There is an insolence which none but those who themselves deserve contempt can bestow, and those only who deserve no contempt can bear.
The dignity of history.
These are called the pious frauds of friendship.
When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager than the man, If not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on.
There is perhaps no surer mark of folly, than to attempt to correct natural infirmities of those we love.
The devil take me, if I think anything but love to be the object of love.
Heroes, notwithstanding the high ideas which, by the means of flatterers, they may entertain of themselves, or the world may conceive of them, have certainly more of mortal than divine about them.
There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.
We endeavor to conceal our vices under the disguise of the opposite virtues.
Perhaps the summary of good-breeding may be reduced to this rule. “Behave unto all men as you would they should behave unto you.” This will most certainly oblige us to treat all mankind with the utmost civility and respect, there being nothing that we desire more than to be treated so by them.
Good-humor will even go so far as often to supply the lack of wit.
What was said by the Latin poet of labor – that it conquers all things – is much more true when applied to impudence.
Nothing more aggravates ill success than the near approach of good.
The highest friendship must always lead us to the highest pleasure.
Fear hath the common fault of a justice of peace, and is apt to conclude hastily from every slight circumstance, without examining the evidence on both sides.
The exceptions of the scrupulous put one in mind of some general pardons where everything is forgiven except crimes.
The life of a coquette is one constant lie; and the only rule by which you can form any correct judgment of them is that they are never what they seem.
A broken heart is a distemper which kills many more than is generally imagined, and would have a fair title to a place in the bills of mortality, did it not differ in one instance from all other diseases, namely, that no physicians can cure it.
Thirst teaches all animals to drink, but drunkenness belongs only to man.
Dignity and love were never yet boon companions.