May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer, or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after!
For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas the absent one, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.
Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.
Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.
Every man becomes, to a certain degree, what the people he generally converses with are.
Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.
A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share in another.
An ignorant man is insignificant and contemptible; nobody cares for his company, and he can just be said to live, and that is all.
The scholar without good breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic.
Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defense of manners.
Pocket all your knowledge with your watch, and never pull it out in company unless desired.
Judgment is not upon all occasions required, but discretion always is.
One should always think of what one is about; when one is learning, one should not think of play; and when one is at play, one should not think of learning.
Every man is to be had one way or another and every woman almost anyway.
Dispatch is the soul of business, and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.
So much are our minds influenced by the accidents of our bodies, that every man is more the man of the day than a regular and consequential character.
Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.
The heart never grows better with age; I fear rather worse, always harder.
There are some occasions when a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest.
We are in truth, more than half what we are by imitation. The great point is to choose good models and to study them with care.