Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter.
Surely no man can reflect, without wonder upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life.
I hardly know so melancholy a reflection as that parents are necessarily the sole directors of the management of children, whether they have or have not judgment, penetration or taste to perform the task.
To divest one's self of some prejudices would be like taking off the skin to feel the better.
Some characters are like some bodies in chemistry; very good, perhaps, in themselves, yet fly off and refuse the least conjunction with each other.
He whom God chooseth, out of doubt doth well: What they that choose their God do, who can tell?
True delicacy, as true generosity, is more wounded by an offence from itself--if I may be allowed the expression--than to itself.
A proud man never shows his pride so much as when he is civil.
Removing prejudices is, alas! too often removing the boundary of a delightful near prospect in order to let in a shockingly extensive one.
Those men who are commended by everybody must be very extraordinary men; or, which is more probable, very inconsiderable men.
As charity covers a multitude of sins before God, so does politeness before men.
The brains of a pedant however full, are vacant.
Respect is better procured by exacting than soliciting it.
Men and statues that are admired ire an elevated situation have a very different effect upon us when we approach them; the first appear less than we imagined them, the last bigger.
We should do by our cunning as we do by our courage--always have it ready to defend ourselves, never to offend others.
I have often thought that the nature of women was interior to that of men in general, but superior in particular.
Unbecoming forwardness oftener proceeds from ignorance than impudence.
