Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains.

I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.

Courage, of all national qualities, is the most precarious; because it is exerted only at intervals, and by a few in every nation; whereas industry, knowledge, civility, may be of constant and universal use, and for several ages, may become habitual to the whole people.

The greater part of mankind may be divided into two classes; that of shallow thinkers who fall short of the truth; and that of abstruse thinkers who go beyond it.

Enthusiasm, being the infirmity of bold and ambitious tempers, is naturally accompanied with a spirit of liberty; as superstition,on the contrary, renders men tame and abject, and fits them for slavery.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate.