A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always want it the least.

Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas - that's what my grandma taught me.

Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.

Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.

He makes people pleased with him by making them first pleased with themselves.

The only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is, doubtless, a separation.

Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it, that you may learn to do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act.

To govern mankind, one must not overrate them.

The difference between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop values himself upon his dress; and the man of sense laughs at it, at the same time he knows he must not neglect it.

If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.

Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.

A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.

Words, which are the dress of thoughts, deserve surely more care than clothes, which are only the dress of the person.

Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any visible reason.

Whoever incites anger has a strong insurance against indifference.

Politeness is as much concerned in answering letters within a reasonable time, as it is in returning a bow, immediately.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

Take the tone of the company you are in.

Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one.

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.

Character must be kept bright as well as clean.

In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.

The mere brute pleasure of reading - the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.

Inferiority is what you enjoy in your best friends.

Pleasure is a necessary reciprocal. No one feels, who does not at the same time give it. To be pleased, one must please. What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you.

If you are not in fashion, you are nobody.

Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.

Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.

I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when one suffers, the other sympathizes.

The more one works, the more willing one is to work.

I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.

When a person is in fashion, all they do is right.

A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.