Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels: first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms, rather than things; and, secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ is worth contending about.

The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world.

Alas! how has the social spirit of Christianity been perverted by fools at one time, and by knaves and bigots at another; by the self-tormentors of the cell, and the all-tormentors of the conclave!

Happiness is much more equally divided than some of us imagine. One man shall possess most of the materials, but little of the thing; another may possess much of the thing, but very few of the material. In this particular view of it, happiness had been beautifully compared to the man in the desert--he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack.

Pride requires very costly food-its keeper's happiness.

It is a curious paradox that precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity, to those mysterious powers assumed by others; and in those regions of darkness and ignorance where man cannot effect even those things that are within the power of man, there we shall ever find that a blind belief in feats that are far beyond those powers has taken the deepest root in the minds of the deceived, and produced the richest harvest to the knavery of the deceiver.

I question if Epicurus and Hume have done mankind a greater service by the looseness of their doctrines than by the purity of their lives. Of such men we may more justly exclaim, than of Caesar, "Confound their virtues, they've undone the world!