It is more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work

There is, indeed a more mitigated scepticism or academical philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are corrected by common sense and reflection.

No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.

If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, it were in vain to take such pains to inculcate it; and nothing would be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts with which all moralists abound.

Avarice, or the desire of gain, is a universal passion which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons.

The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness

There is only one vice, which may be found in life with as strong features, and as high a colouring as needs be employed by any satyrist or comic poet; and that is AVARICE.