Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needsbe delightful and rejoicing.

A delicacy of taste is favorable to love and friendship, by confining our choice to few people, and making us indifferent to the company and conversation of the greater part of men.

The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.

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

A CAUSE is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.

Anything that is conceivable is possible.

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.