This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.

The law always limits every power it gives.

A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.

Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.

Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.

There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.

The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.

There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.

Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.

Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.

Men often act knowingly against their interest.

Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.