It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept.
I am forced, as I have often said, to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry: for one or other I must do.
All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.
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.
Over-niceness may be under-niceness.
Friendly satire may be compared to a fine lancet, which gently breathes a vein for health's sake.
Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.
What we look upon as our greatest unhappiness in a difficulty we are involved in, may possibly be the evil hastening to its crisis, and happy days may ensue.
Friendship is the perfection of love, and superior to love; it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, Madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship.