History is the discovering of the principles of human nature.

The proper office of religion is to regulate the heart of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, andobedience; and as its operation is silent, and only enforces the motives of morality and justice, it is in danger of being overlooked, and confounded with these other motives.

Reasoning from the common course of nature, and without supposing any new interposition of the Supreme Cause, which ought always to be excluded from philosophy; what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed before our birth: And if the former existence noways concerned us, neither will the latter.

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

The whole of natural theologyresolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous proposition, That the cause or causesof order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.

The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.

It is still open for me, as well as you, to regulate my behavior, by my experience of past events.