In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate.

There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.

The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.

Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

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.