If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely.
The reasons which any man offers to you for his own conduct betray his opinion of your character.
Almost all human affairs are tedious. Everything is too long. Visits, dinners, concerts, plays, speeches, pleadings, essays, sermons, are too long. Pleasure and business labor equally under this defect, or, as I should rather say, this fatal super-abundance.
Do not shun this maxim because it is common-place. On the contrary, take the closest heed of what observant men, who would probably like to show originality, are yet constrained to repeat. Therein lies the marrow of the wisdom of the world.
Remember that in giving any reason at all for refusing, you lay some foundation for a future request.
The thing which makes one man greater than another, the quality by which we ought to measure greatness, is a man’s capacity for loving.
Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.
Experience is the extract of suffering.
No man who has not sat in the assemblies of men can know the light, odd and uncertain ways in which decisions are often arrived at.
Nature intended you to be the fountain-spring of cheerfulness and social life, and not the mountain of despair and melancholy.
It is quite impossible to understand the character of a person from one action, however striking that action may be.
War may be the game of kings, but, like the games at ancient Rome, it is generally exhibited to please and pacify the people.
Entrust a secret to one whose importance will not be much increased by divulging it.
The most enthusiastic man in a cause is rarely chosen as the leader.
It requires a strong mind to bear up against several languages. Some persons have learnt so many, that they have ceased to think in any one.
You cannot ensure the gratitude of others for a favour conferred upon them in the way which is most agreeable to yourself.
If you are often deceived by those around you, you may be sure that you deserve to be deceived; and that instead of railing at the general falseness of mankind, you have first to pronounce judgment on your own jealous tyranny, or on your own weak credulity.
A great and frequent error in our judgment of human nature is to suppose that those sentiments and feelings have no existence, which may be only for a time concealed. The precious metals are not found at the surface of the earth, except in sandy places.
Most terrors are but spectral illusions. Only have the courage of the man who could walk up to his spectre seated in the chair before him, and sit down upon it; the horrid thing will not partake the chair with you.
There is nothing so easily made offensive as good reasoning; and men of clear logical minds, if not gifted at the same time with tact, make more enemies than men with bad hearts and unsound understandings.