To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian.

It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause.

There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.

It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate.

That the corruption of the best thing produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, by the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion.

All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us the by senses and experience.

The bigotry of theologians is a malady which seems almost incurable.