Kitsch is: a species of beauty, which, as it is florid and superficial, pleases at first; but soon palls upon the taste, and is rejected with disdain, at least rated at much lower value.

No truth appears to me more evident than that beasts are endowed with thought and reason as well as men.

From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects. This is the sum total of all our experimental conclusions.

This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.

But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes of this latter species, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence on the human mind.

Nothing is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting.

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.