Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.

Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.

There is this difference between the two temporal blessings - health and money; money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflec.

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.

Women do not transgress the bounds of decorum so often as men; but when they do, they go greater lengths.

Some authors write nonsense in a clear style, and others sense in an obscure one; some can reason without being able to persuade, others can persuade without being able to reason; some dive so deep that they descend into darkness, and others soar so high that they give us no light; and some, in a vain attempt to be cutting and dry, give us only that which is cut and dried. We should labor, therefore, to treat with ease of things that are difficult; with familiarity, of things that are novel; and with perspicuity, of things that are profound.

All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, by by rising above them.