There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.

In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But theworks of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue; and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.

The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of his wisdom who made it.

I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything.