..all arguments concerning existence are founded on the relation of cause and effect; that our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from experience; and all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past. .... Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses.

Mankind are always found prodigal both of blood and treasure in the maintenance of public justice.

Anything that is conceivable is possible.

No human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion

Happy the man whom indulgent fortune allows to pay to virtue what he owes to nature, and to make a generous gift of what must otherwise be ravished from him by cruel necessity.

It is a certain rule that wit and passion are entirely incompatible. When the affections are moved, there is no place for the imagination.

The religious hypothesis, therefore, must be considered only as a particular method of accounting for the visible phenomena of the universe: but no just reasoner will ever presume to infer from it any single fact, and alter or add to the phenomena, in any single particular.