When you meet an inferior in a public street, it is your duty to cut him, if any one who knows you is in sight.  If you cannot escape a recognition, do it with as little parade as possible—­a movement of the lips is sufficient—­and walk on at a quick rate.  Who knows but the Lord Mayor, or Mr. Alderman Blowbladder, may observe you?

A grain of impudence will fetch more in the market than twelve bushels of modesty.

In the scale of dignities two Cheapside chaises make one Stanhope; two Stanhopes a cab; two cabs a landaulet and pair; and so on up to the state-coach; and as their numerical relation, so is the degree of respect they may justly exact.

If you visit foreign parts, and meet a countryman who may be useful to you, do not hesitate to avail yourself of his services; but be sure never to acknowledge him should you meet in your native land, unless he receive some other introduction to you, and you have it on creditable evidence that he is a man of good property.

Never allow reason weight in any thing you have resolved to be right that is opposed to it.  Reason may be useful in mathematics, to men of genius, and to scholars; but it has little to do with every-day existence, with the Three per Cents, the national revenue, the Stock Exchange, or the India House.

Never get acquainted with your next-door neighbour, unless you find he is in good pecuniary circumstances.  If you meet on the highway, or touch elbows at your respective fore-doors, look at each other like two strange tom-cats, and pursue your way.

Commiserate the fate of a Thurtell, a Probert, or a Corder, sent (ripened for heaven in a forty-eight hours’ probation by a Newgate chaplain) out of the world their hellish acts have so sullied; but sympathise not with a Riego or a Canaris.  Heroic vice was always spiriting; heroic virtue is phlegmatic.  John Bull’s constitution is only acted upon by strong excitement.

When you dine with the Lord Mayor, or any of the Aldermen of Brobdignag, and they attempt to exhibit their skill at repartee, be sure decide the wealthiest to be the wittiest.  It will insure you a good dinner another time, perhaps something more.

In choosing a wife, prefer even Bristol ugliness to beauty, especially if there be a fortune.  Beauty will change, intellect may be too much for you, but ugliness will be true to you as to itself; besides its advantage of preserving you from the effects of conjugal frailty.

A judge’s wig is a Delphic mystery, whether brains be in it or not.  It is a of sublunary wisdom—­an umbrella over an oracle.

When you dine at a public dinner, always take your seat opposite a favourite dish.  Carve it yourself, and select the choicest bits, then leave it to your right-hand neighbour to help the rest of the company.

Always stick your napkin in your button-hole at the dinner table, if you admit such French superfluities at all.  Eat with the sharp edge of your knife towards your mouth; forks won’t take up gravy.  Never wipe your lips when you take wine with a lady, and fill both her glass and your own until daylight is not visible through the crystal.