Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.
When one is at play, one should not think of one’s learning.
People hate who makes you feel one’s inferiority.
Study the heart and the mind of man, and begin with your own. Meditation and reflection must lay the foundation of that knowledge, but experience and practice must, and alone can, complete it.
The rulers of the earth are all worth knowing; they suggest moral reflections: and the respect that one naturally has for God’s vice-regents here on earth is greatly increased by acquaintance with them.
It is to be presumed, that a man of common sense, who does not desire to please, desires nothing at all; since he must know that he cannot obtain anything without it.
Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too; by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it.
A vulgar man is captious and jealous; eager and impetuous about trifles. He suspects himself to be slighted, and thinks everything that is said meant at him.
To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life.
People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.
It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and therefore one seldom does it at all.
In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
Ridicule is the best test of truth.
Whoever incites anger has a strong insurance against indifference.
Always make the best of the best, and never make bad worse.
Silence and reserve suggest latent power. What some men think has more effect than what others say.
Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.
Lord Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don’t choose to have it known.
Mankind is made up of inconsistencies, and no man acts invariably up to his predominant character. The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and the weakest sometimes wisely.
Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice.