The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.

To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it.

The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the State.

Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.

Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.