Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.

Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than to persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity.

A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.

In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.

Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.

Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.

Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave