There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.

The best defense against logic is ignorance.

The Christian religion teaches me two points-that there is a God whom men can know, and that their nature is so corrupt that they are unworthy of Him.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other.

Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true and then show that it is.