People must be taken as they are, and we should never try make them or ourselves better by quarreling with them.

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.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

Knowledge of those unalterable Relations which Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other...To these we should conform in good Earnest; and not think to force Nature, and the whole Order of her System, by a Compliance with our Pride, and Folly, to conform to our artificial Regulations.

All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.