What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.

The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?

The rate of profit... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.

I am always willing to run some hazard of being tedious, in order to be sure that I am perspicuous; and, after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely abstracted.