Enthusiasm produces the most cruel disorders in human society; but its fury is like that of thunder and tempest, which exhaust themselves in a little time, and leave the air more calm and serene than before.

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

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.

There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.

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

Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.

Were a man, whom I know to be honest and opulent, and with whom I live in intimate friendship, to come into my house, where I am surrounded with my servants, I rest assured, that he is not to stab me before he leaves it, in order to rob me of my silver standish; and I no more suspect this event, than the falling of the house itself which is new, and solidly built and founded.--But he may have been seized with a sudden and unknown frenzy.--So may a sudden earthquake arise, and shake and tumble my house about my ears.