The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency.

Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds.

A miracle signifies nothing more than an event... the cause of which cannot be explained by another familiar instance, or.... which the narrator is unable to explain.

Sadness diminishes a man's powers

There is no fear without some hope, and no hope without some fear.

I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.