To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear.

It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates.

A jealous lover lights his torch from the firebrand of the fiend.