The victim to too severe a law is considered as a martyr rather than a criminal.

There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains.

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

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

Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.

Some are cursed with the fullness of satiety; and how can they bear the ills of life when its very pleasures fatigue them?

There are three difficulties in authorship; to write any thing worth the publishing — to find honest men to publish it — and to get sensible men to read it.