Giving advice is many times only the privilege of saying a foolish thing one's self, under pretence of hindering another from doing one.

It is with followers at court as with followers on the road, who first bespatter those that go before, and then tread on their heels.

False happiness is like false money, it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves some ordinary occasions; but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and allay, and feel the loss.

Dastardly men are like sorry horses, who have but just spirit and mettle enough to be mischievous.

Some people will never learn any thing, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labour of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

A man of business may talk of philosophy; a man who has none may practise it.

There are some solitary wretches who seem to have left the rest of mankind, only as Eve left Adam, to meet the devil in private.

The vanity of human life is like a river, constantly passing away, and constantly coming on.

I seldom see a noble building, or any great piece of magnificence and pomp, but I think how little is all

this to satisfy the ambition, or to fill the idea of an immortal soul!

It is a certain truth, that a man is never so easy, or so little imposed upon, as among people of the best sense it costs far more trouble to be admitted or continued in ill company than in good; as the former have less understanding to be employed, so they have more vanity to be pleased; and to keep a fool constantly in good humour with himself, and with others, is no very easy task.

The difference between what is commonly called ordinary company and good company, is only hearing the same things said in a little room, or in a large saloon, at small tables or at great tables, before two candles or twenty sconces.

Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person; they make friendships as kings of old made leagues, who sacrificed some poor animal betwixt them, and commenced strict allies; so the ladies, after they have pulled some character to pieces, are from henceforth inviolable friends.

It is with narrow-souled people as with narrownecked bottles; the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out.

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

Since it is reasonable to doubt most things, we should most of all doubt that reason of ours which would demonstrate all things.

To buy books as some do who make no use of them,

only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because they were made by some famous tailor.

It is as offensive to speak wit in a fool's company as it would be ill manners to whisper in it; he is displeased at both for the same reason, because he is ignorant of what is said.

A good-natured man has the whole world to be happy out of; whatever good befals his species, a well-deserving person promoted, a modest man advanced, an indigent one relieved, all this he looks upon but as a remoter blessing of Providence on himself; which then seems to make him amends for the narrowness of his own fortune, when it does the same thing he would have done had it been in his power: for what a luxurious man in poverty would want for horses and footmen, a good-natured man wants for his friend or the poor.

False critics rail at false wits, as quacks and impostors are still cautioning us to beware of counterfeits, and decry other cheats only to make more way for their own.

Old men, for the most part, are like old chronicles, that give you dull, but true accounts of times past, and are worth knowing only on that score.

There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty, as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally subject to change.

Wit in conversation is only a readiness of thought

and a facility of expression, or (in the midwives' phrase) a quick conception, and an easy delivery.

We should manage our thoughts in composing a poem, as shepherds do their flowers in making a garland; first select the choicest, and then dispose them in the most proper places, where they give a lustre to each other: like the feathers in Indian crowns, which are so managed that every one reflects a part of its colour and gloss on the next.

As handsome children are more a dishonour to a deformed father than ugly ones, because unlike himself; so good thoughts, owned by a plagiary, bring him more shame than his own ill ones. When a poor thief appears in rich garments, we immediately know they are none of his own.

If he who does an injury be his own judge in his own cause, and does wrong without reason, by being the first aggressor; then surely it is no wonder the injured should think the same way, and right himself by revenge; that is, be both judge and party too, since the other was so who first wronged him.

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provisions of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

The most positive men are the most credulous; since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their falsest flatterer and worst enemy, their own selflove.

Get your enemies to read your works, in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your secondself, that he will judge too like you.

VOL. V.

c c

Women use lovers as they do cards; they play with them a while, and when they have got all they can by them, throw them away, call for new ones, and then perhaps lose by the new ones all they got by the old

ones.

Honour in a woman's mouth, like the oath in the mouth of a cheating gamester, is ever still most used as their truth is most questioned.

Your true jilt uses men like chess-men: she never dwells so long on any single man as to over-look another who may prove more advantageous; nor gives one another's place, until she has seen it is for her interest; but if one is more useful to her than others, brings him in over the heads of all others.

Women, as they are like riddles in being unintelligible, so generally resemble them in this, that they please us no longer when once we know them.

A man who admires a fine woman, has yet no more reason to wish himself her husband, than one who admired the Hesperian fruit, would have had to wish himself the dragon that kept it.

He who marries a wife because he cannot always live chastely, is much like one who finding a few humours in his body, resolves to wear a perpetual blister.

Married people, for being so closely united, are but the apter to part; as knots the harder they are pulled, break the sooner.

A family is but too often a commonwealth of malig