We feel and know that we are eternal.

Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently for the most part, very prone to credulity.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

All is One (Nature, God)

In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.

The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, insofar as it understands all things to be necessary.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.