In order to judge of the inside of others, study your own; for men in general are very much alike; and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same; and whatever engages or disgusts, pleases or offends you, in others will, ‘mutatis mutandis’, engage, disgust, please, or offend others, in you.  Observe with the utmost attention all the operations of your own mind, the nature of your passions, and the various motives that determine your will; and you may, in a great degree, know all mankind.  For instance, do you find yourself hurt and mortified when another makes you feel his superiority, and your own inferiority, in knowledge, parts, rank, or fortune?  You will certainly take great care not to make a person whose good will, good word, interest, esteem, or friendship, you would gain, feel that superiority in you, in case you have it.  If disagreeable insinuations, sly sneers, or repeated contradictions, tease and irritate you, would you use them where you wish to engage and please?  Surely not, and I hope you wish to engage and please, almost universally.  The temptation of saying a smart and witty thing, or ‘bon mot’; and the malicious applause with which it is commonly received, has made people who can say them, and, still oftener, people who think they can, but cannot, and yet try, more enemies, and implacable ones too, than any one other thing that I know of:  When such things, then, shall happen to be said at your expense (as sometimes they certainly will), reflect seriously upon the sentiments of uneasiness, anger, and resentment which they excite in you; and consider whether it can be prudent, by the same means, to excite the same sentiments in others against you.  It is a decided folly to lose a friend for a jest; but, in my mind, it is not a much less degree of folly to make an enemy of an indifferent and neutral person, for the sake of a ‘bon mot’.  When things of this kind happen to be said of you, the most prudent way is to seem not to suppose that they are meant at you, but to dissemble and conceal whatever degree of anger you may feel inwardly; but, should they be so plain that you cannot be supposed ignorant of their meaning, to join in the laugh of the company against yourself; acknowledge the hit to be a fair one, and the jest a good one, and play off the whole thing in seeming good humor; but by no means reply in the same way; which only shows that you are hurt, and publishes the victory which you might have concealed.  Should the thing said, indeed injure your honor or moral character, there is but one proper reply; which I hope you never will have occasion to make.