Evil courses can yield pleasure no longer than while thought and reflection can be kept off.
Platonic love is platonic nonsense.
Air and manners are more expressive than words.
Honesty is good sense, politeness, amiableness, – all in one.
Beauty is an accidental and transient good.
Over-niceness may be under-niceness.
A man who insults the modesty of a woman, as good as tells her that he has seen something in her conduct that warranted his presumption.
A fop takes great pains to hang out a sign, by his dress, of what he has within.
A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one.
Whom we fear more than love, we are not far from hating.
An acquaintance with the muses, in the education of youth, contributes not a little to soften manners. It gives a delicate turn to the imagination and a polish to the mind.
That cruelty which children are permitted to show to birds and other animals will most probably exert itself on their fellow creatures when at years of maturity.
Women are sometimes drawn in to believe against probability by the unwillingness they have to doubt their own merit.
Chastity, like piety, is a uniform grace.
An acknowledged love sanctifies every little freedom; and little freedoms beget great ones.
Familiarity destroys reverence.
This, I suppose, makes me such a sauce-box, and bold-face, and a creature, and all because I won’t be a sauce-box and bold-face indeed.
But these great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things!
Is it not strange, that Love borders so much upon Hate? But this wicked Love is not like the true virtuous Love, to be sure: That and Hatred must be as far off, as Light and Darkness. And how must this Hate have been increased, if he had met with a base Compliance, after his wicked Will had been gratify’d?
I am not apt to run into grave declamations against the times:.