[priests are] the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.

Delicacy of taste has the same effect as delicacy of passion; it enlarges the sphere both of our happiness and our misery.

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.

Habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge, and still less to the understanding, of lawful relations.

Though men of delicate taste be rare, they are easily to be distinguished in society by the soundness of their understanding, and the superiority of their faculties above the rest of mankind.

Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behavior.

Of all the animals with which this globe is peopled, there is none towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercised more cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities with which she has loaded him, and in the slender means which she affords to the relieving these necessities.