The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

Every movement of the theater by a skilful poet is communicated, as it were, by magic, to the spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions which actuate the several personages of the drama.

Almost every one has a predominant inclination, to which his other desires and affections submit, and which governs him, though perhaps with some intervals, though the whole course of his life.

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.