All I desire for my own burial, is not to be buried alive; but how or where, I think, must be entirely indifferent to every rational creature.
Women are all so far Machiavellians that they are never either good or bad by halves; their passions are too strong, and their reason too weak, to do anything with moderation.
No woman ever yet either reasoned or acted long together consequentially; but some little thing, some love, some resentment, somepresent momentary interest, some supposed slight, or some humour, always breaks in upon, and oversets their most prudent resolutions and schemes.
Second-rate knowledge, and middling talents, carry a man farther at courts, and in the busy part of the world, than superior knowledge and shining parts.
In short, let it be your maxim through life, to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the informationsof others.
It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.
It is reported here that the King of Prussia has gone mad and has been locked up. There would be nothing bad about that: at leastthat might of his would no longer be a menace, and you could breathe freely for a while. I much prefer madmen who are locked up to those who are not.
I have, by long experience, found women to be like Telephus’s spear: if one end kills, the other cures.
There is a sort of veteran women of condition, who, having lived always in the grand mode, and having possibly had some gallantries, together with the experience of five and twenty or thirty years, form a young fellow better than all the rules that can be given him.
Indifference is commonly the mother of discretion.
A man who owes a little can clear it off in a very little time, and, if he is a prudent man, will; whereas a man, who by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all.
A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness; genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art.
Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid.
I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide.
A joker is near akin to a buffoon; and neither of them is the least related to wit.
If you wish particularly to gain the good graces and affection of certain people, men or women, try to discover their most striking merit, if they have one, and their dominant weakness, for every one has his own, then do justice to the one, and a little more than justice to the other.
You should not only have attention to everything, but a quickness of attention, so as to observe at once all the people in the room – their motions, their looks and their words – and yet without staring at them and seeming to be an observer.
Not to perceive the little weaknesses and the idle but innocent affectations of the company may be allowable as a sort of polite duty. The company will be pleased with you if you do, and most probably will not be reformed by you if you do not.
Nothing is more dissimilar than natural and acquired politeness. The first consists in a willing abnegation of self; the second in a compelled recollection of others.
True politeness is perfect ease and freedom. It simply consists in treating others just as you love to be treated yourself.