Sir Richard Steele

The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men's words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.

It is an impertinent and unreasonable fault in conversation for one man to take up all the discourse.

It is a secret known but to few, yet of no small use in the conduct of life, that when you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.

Though very troublesome to others, anger is most so to him that has it.

Nothing is more silly than the pleasure some people take in \'speaking their minds.\' A man of this make will say a rude thing for the mere pleasure of saying it, when an opposite behavior, full as innocent, might have preserved his friend, or made his fortune.

A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it.

Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it.

He that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.

That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart

A little in drink, but at all times your faithful husband.

Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.

I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he who envies him

It is an endless and frivolous Pursuit to act by any other Rule than the Care of satisfying our own Minds in what we do

A woman seldom writes her mind but in her postscript

I look upon it as a Point of Morality, to be obliged by those who endeavour to oblige me

There is no Pleasure like that of receiving Praise from the Praiseworthy

Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.

Nothing can atone for the lack of modesty; without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.

Simplicity of all things is the hardest to be copy.

Whoever would be wise should read the Proverbs; whoever would be holy should read the Psalms.

It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.

Whether a pretty woman grants or withholds her favors, she always likes to be asked for them.

It is the duty of a great person so to demean himself, as that whatever endowments he may have, he may appear to value himself upon no qualities but such as any man may arrive at.

Mutual good humor is a dress we ought to appear in wherever we meet, and we should make no mention of what concerns ourselves, without it be of matters wherein our friends ought to rejoice.

The praise of an ignorant man is only good-will, and you should receive his kindness as he is a good neighbor in society, and not as a good judge of your actions in point of fame and reputation.

It is a very melancholy reflection that men are usually so weak that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain to be in their right senses.

The person, whom you favored with a loan, if he be a good man, will think himself in your debt after he has paid you.

No woman is capable of being beautiful who is not incapable of being false.

There are so few who can grow old with a good grace.

A man advanced in years that thinks fit to look back on his former life, and calls that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, excluding all parts which were not pleasant to him, will find himself very young, if not in infancy.