Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal.
Samuel Richardson
Calamity is the test of integrity.
Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.
A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.
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.
Men generally are afraid of a wife who has more understanding than themselves.
Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.
Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.
Men will bear many things from a kept mistress, which they would not bear from a wife.
A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.
There is but one pride pardonable; that of being above doing a base or dishonorable action.
O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!
Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.
Parents sometimes make not those allowances for youth, which, when young, they wished to be made for themselves.
Nothing dries sooner than tears.
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!
Those who have least to do are generally the most busy people in the world.
Those who will bear much, shall have much to bear.
A Stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play.
Vast is the field of Science. The more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know.
From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.
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.
The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.
Shame is a fitter and generally a more effectual punishment for a child than beating.
Women do not often fall in love with philosophers.
It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.
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.
Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures.
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.
For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.
Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends.
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.
The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.
Prejudices in disfavor of a person fix deeper, and are much more difficult to be removed, than prejudices in favor.
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.
The difference in the education of men and women must give the former great advantages over the latter, even where geniuses are equal.
To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing.
A man may keep a woman, but not his estate.
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.
Would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer?
Women love to be called cruel, even when they are kindest.
Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.
All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.
Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.
Those we dislike can do nothing to please us.
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?
A husband's mother and his wife had generally better be visitors than inmates.
The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications.
The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.