Keep your eye fixed not so much on what they [people] ought in reason to do, as on what they are likely to do based on their disposition and habits.

To relinquish a present good through apprehension of a future evil is in most instances unwise ... from a fear which may afterwards turn out groundless, you lost the good that lay within your grasp.

There is nothing so fleeting as the memory of benefits received.

It is a great matter to be in authority over others; for authority, if it be rightly used, will make you feared beyond your actual resources.

I know no man who feels deeper disgust than I do at the ambition, avarice, and profligacy of the priesthood, as well because every one of these vices is odious in itself, as because each of them separately and all of them together are utterly abhorrent in men making profession of a life dedicated to God.

Experience has always shown, and reason also, that affairs which depend on many seldom succeed.

To give vent now and then to his feelings, whether of pleasure or discontent, is a great ease to a man's heart.