Gratitude is one of those things that cannot be bought. It must be born with men, or else all the obligations in the world will not create it.

In our corrupted state, common weaknesses and defects contribute more towards the reconciling us to one another than all the precepts of the philosophers and divines.

The past is the best way to suppose what may come.

Formality is sufficiently revenged upon the world for being so unreasonably laughed at; it is destroyed, it is true, but it hath the spiteful satisfaction of seeing everything destroyed with it.

The more arguments you win, the less friends you will have

Most men's anger about religion is as if two men should quarrel for a lady they neither of them care for.

Nothing would more contribute to make a man wise than to have always an enemy in his view.