Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good.

Expect not praise without envy until you are dead.

The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.

Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts.

For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman; and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf and teach her to live with men have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering, her.

Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.

There are two way of establishing a reputation, one to be praised by honest people and the other to be accused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the first one, because it will always be accompanied by the latter.