"A good face, they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World?"

"One fool at least in every married couple."

"When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager that the man, if not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on."

"These are called the pious frauds of friendship."

"Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation."

"It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying which is terrible."

"Life may as properly be called an art as any other."

"When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief."

"Republic of letters."

"Hairbreadth missings of happiness look like the insults of Fortune."

"His designs were strictly honorable, as the phrase is; that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage."

"The dignity of history."

"Amiable weakness."

"At last the Ocean, that hospitable friend to the wretched, opened her capacious arms to receive him."

"Distinction without a difference."

"He was, indeed, in a condition, in which, if reason had interposed, though only to advise, she might have received the answer which one Cleostratus gave many years ago to a silly fellow, who asked him, if he was not ashamed to be drunk? "Are not you," said Cleostratus, "ashamed to admonish a drunken man?" — To say the truth, in a court of justice drunkenness must not be an excuse, yet in a court of conscience it is greatly so."

"In reality, the world have payed too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are."

"Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?"

"Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven."

"Every physician almost hath his favorite disease."

"...for nothing can be more reasonable, than that slaves and flatterers should exact the same taxes on all below them, which they themselves pay to all above them."

"Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any farther together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion, of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic...""

"...the excellence of the mental entertainment consists less in the subject than in the author's skill in well dressing it up."

"The same animal which hath the honour to have some part of his flesh eaten at the table of a duke, may perhaps be degraded in another part,and some of his limbs gibbeted, as it were, in the vilest stall in town."

"Men who pay for what they eat will insist on gratifying their palates"

"Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of."

"I have found it; I have discovered the cause of all the misfortunes which befell him. A public school, Joseph, was the cause of all the calamaties which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality."

"They are the affectation of affectation."

"I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species."

"I am content; that is a blessing greater than riches; and he to whom that is given need ask no more."

"To whom nothing is given, of him can nothing be required."

"It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts."

"The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is affectation"

"A comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable; but life every where furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous."

"Penny saved is a penny got."

"Sir, money, money, the most charming of all things; money, which will say more in one moment than the most elegant lover can in years. Perhaps you will say a man is not young; I answer he is rich. He is not genteel, handsome, witty, brave, good-humoured, but he is rich, rich, rich, rich, rich — that one word contradicts everything you can say against him."

"We must eat to live and live to eat."

"Lo, when two dogs are fighting in the streets, With a third dog one of the two dogs meets; With angry teeth he bites him to the bone, And this dog smarts for what that dog has done."

"To sun myself in Huncamunca's eyes."

"Thy modesty's a candle to thy merit."

"When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough; I've done my duty, and I've done no more."

"Petition me no petitions, sir, to-day; Let other hours be set apart for business. Today it is our pleasure to be drunk; And this our queen shall be as drunk as we."

"All Nature wears one universal grin."

"Love and scandal are the best sweeteneers of tea."

"Dancing begets warmth, which is the parent of wantonness. It is, Sir, the great grandfather of cuckoldom."

"A lover, when he is admitted to cards, ought to be solemnly silent, and observe the motions of his mistress. He must laugh when she laughs, sigh when she sighs. In short, he should be the shadow of her mind. A lady, in the presence of her lover, should never want a looking-glass; as a beau, in the presence of his looking-glass, never wants a mistress."

"This story will not go down."

"For it is very hard, my lord," said a convicted felon at the bar to the late excellent judge Burnet, "to hang a poor man for stealing a horse." "You are not to be hanged sir," answered my ever-honored and beloved friend, "for stealing a horse, but you are to be hanged that horses may not be stolen."

"Illustrious predecessors."

"He in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would have ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him."