Among the arts of conversation no one pleases more than mutual deference or civility, which leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companions, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance so natural to the human mind.

Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.

The law always limits every power it gives.

Moving from an objective statement of fact to a subjective statement of value does not work, because it leaves open questions that have not been answered.

It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.

It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces, which come from the hand of the master.