Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.

It has been well observed that the tongue discovers the state of the mind no less than that of the body; but in either case, before the philosopher or the physician can judge, the patient must open his mouth.

We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.

The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason.

Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another; that the strength of the community is not unfrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it.