A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war.

The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.

There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to their inclination and interest.

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

Flattery is a foolish suicide; she destroys herself with her own hands.

If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour.

To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.