It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.

Handsome husbands often make a wife’s heart ache.

A man may keep a woman, but not his estate.

Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal.

There are men who think themselves too wise to be religious.

Whenever we approve, we can find a hundred good reasons to justify our approbation. Whenever we dislike, we can find a thousand to justify our dislike.

The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.

The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.

It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves.

Honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight.

Those who will bear much, shall have much to bear.

Men will bear many things from a kept mistress, which they would not bear from a wife.

Women love to be called cruel, even when they are kindest.

The plays and sports of children are as salutary to them as labor and work are to grown persons.

Would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer?

To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing.

People who act like angels ought to have angels to deal with.

Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures.

Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation.

The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.

All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.

There is but one pride pardonable; that of being above doing a base or dishonorable action.

From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.

Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.

Calamity is the test of integrity.

A good man, though he will value his own countrymen, yet will think as highly of the worthy men of every nation under the sun.

Men generally are afraid of a wife who has more understanding than themselves.

Sorrow makes an ugly face odious.

For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.

Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.

As a child is indulged or checked in its early follies, a ground is generally laid for the happiness or misery of the future man.

Some children act as if they thought their parents had nothing to do, but to see them established in the world and then quit it.

What we want to tell, we wish our friend to have curiosity to hear.

If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that otherwise would make no figure in it.

O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!

Marry first, and love will come after is a shocking assertion; since a thousand things may happen to make the state but barely tolerable, when it is entered into with mutual affection.

People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.

The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications.

The English, the plain English, of the politest address of a gentleman to a lady is, I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant: Pray be so good as to let me be your Lord and Master.

A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.

Great allowances ought to be made for the petulance of persons laboring under ill-health.

Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.

Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.

Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.

The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.

Women do not often fall in love with philosophers.

Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous.

There is a pride, a self-love, in human minds that will seldom be kept so low as to make men and women humbler than they ought to be.

Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.

We are all very ready to believe what we like.

Prejudices in disfavor of a person fix deeper, and are much more difficult to be removed, than prejudices in favor.

The difference in the education of men and women must give the former great advantages over the latter, even where geniuses are equal.

Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others.

What likelihood is there of corrupting a man who has no ambition?

Women are so much in love with compliments that rather than want them, they will compliment one another, yet mean no more by it than the men do.

Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.

The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant.

Quantity in food is more to be regarded than quality. A full meal is a great enemy both to study and industry.

A Stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play.

There would be no supporting life were we to feel quite as poignantly for others as we do for ourselves.

Women who have had no lovers, or having had one, two or three, have not found a husband, have perhaps rather had a miss than a loss, as men go.

Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun.

Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends.

Shame is a fitter and generally a more effectual punishment for a child than beating.

Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.

It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.

Love is not a volunteer thing.

It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept.

Nothing dries sooner than tears.

The Cause of Women is generally the Cause of Virtue.

To what a bad choice is many a worthy woman betrayed, by that false and inconsiderate notion, That a reformed rake makes the best husband!

The mind can be but full. It will be as much filled with a small disagreeable occurrence, having no other, as with a large one.

A husband’s mother and his wife had generally better be visitors than inmates.

The first reading of a Will, where a person dies worth anything considerable, generally affords a true test of the relations’ love to the deceased.

Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating.

Those who have least to do are generally the most busy people in the world.

A widow’s refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.

There hardly can be a greater difference between any two men, than there too often is, between the same man, a lover and a husband.

Parents sometimes make not those allowances for youth, which, when young, they wished to be made for themselves.

Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.

Vast is the field of Science. The more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know.

Humility is a grace that shines in a high condition but cannot, equally, in a low one because a person in the latter is already, perhaps, too much humbled.

All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.