CCCLXIX. People sometimes complain that you do not talk, when they have not given you an opportunity to utter a word for a whole evening. The real ground of disappointment has been, that you have not shewn a sufficient degree of attention to what they have said.
CCCLXX. I can listen with patience to the dullest or emptiest companion in the world, if he does not require me to do anything more than listen.
CCCLXXI. Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
CCCLXXII. Are we to infer from this, that wit is a vulgar faculty, or that people of education are proportionably deficient in liveliness and spirit?
CCCLXXIII. We seldom hear and seldomer make a witty remark. Yet we read nothing else in Congreve’s plays.
CCCLXXIV. Those who object to wit are envious of it.
CCCLXXV. The persons who make the greatest outcry against bad puns, are the very same who also find fault with good ones. A bad pun at least generally leads to a wise remark—that it is a bad one.
CCCLXXVI. A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one—they shew one another off to the best advantage.
CCCLXXVII. A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dullness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.
CCCLXXVIII. It is not easy to write essays like Montaigne, nor Maxims in the manner of the Duke de la Rochefoucault.