Whenever the spirit of fanaticism, at once so credulous and so crafty, has insinuated itself into a noble mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital principles of virtue and veracity.

A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.

The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events.

Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.

In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.

The aspiring efforts of genius, or virtue, either in active or speculative life, are measured, not so much by their real elevation, as by the height to which they ascend above the level of their age and country; and the same stature, which in a people of giants would pass unnoticed, must appear conspicuous in a race of pygmies.

[Instead] of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.