The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.

Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.

Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this we need only represent, on the one hand,the numberless benefits which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; and on the other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain nations, a laziness, poverty, a total neglect of everything.

Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour's reading would not dissipate.

The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.

A rational army would run away.