There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused.

In all places, and in all times, those religionists who have believed too much have been more inclined to violence and persecution than those who have believed too little.

There are many that despise half the world; but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them.

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.

It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.

Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.

To despise our own species is the price we must often pay for knowledge of it.