Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.

Take the tone of the company you are in.

Hear one side and you will be in the dark. Hear both and all will be clear.

Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed.

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

Let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but at the same time let them feel, the steadiness of your resentment.

Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least.

Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked.

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.

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

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.

Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.

The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it.

Inferiority is what you enjoy in your best friends.

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

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

If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.

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.

Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.

Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough.

Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one.

In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool.

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

In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.

Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.

If you are not in fashion, you are nobody.

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

Character must be kept bright as well as clean.

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.

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

Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.

Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.

I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.

As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless.

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

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

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.

I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.

The less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.

In those days he was wiser than he is now - he used frequently to take my advice.

There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.

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

If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.

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

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

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

To govern mankind, one must not overrate them.