The manner of your speaking is full as important as the matter, as more people have ears to be tickled than understandings to judge.
If you have wit, use it to please and not to hurt: you may shine like the sun in the temperate zones without scorching.
A judicious reticence is hard to learn, but it is one of the great lessons of life.
A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men; mystery is the only secrecy of weak and cunning ones.
Women’s beauty, like men’s wit, is generally fatal to the owners.
Women have, in general, but ne object, which is their beauty; upon which, scarce any flattery is too gross for them to swallow.
Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other, and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so.
Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings.
Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true Wit or good Sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world. A man of parts and fashion is therefore often seen to smile, but never heard to laugh.
Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.
Most arts require long study and application; but the most useful of all, that of pleasing, only the desire.
Not to care for philosophy is to be a true philospher.
The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.
Whenever a man seeks your advice he generally seeks your praise.
People will, in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb which says vry justly, ‘Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are.’
Sexual intercourse is a grossly overrated pastime; the position is undignified, the pleasure momentary and the consequences damnable.
You must embrace the man you hate, if you cannot be justified in knocking him down.
Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way to merit that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties.
Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity.
A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.