The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.

Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulations of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.

Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriae of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine and the sustaining corn.

The method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best.

Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.

Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.