Do not wonder if the common people speak more truly than those above them: they speak more safely.

We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.

The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or the wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.

All the crimes on earth do not destroy so many of the human race nor alienate so much property as drunkenness.

If you want to convey fact, this can only ever be done through a form of distortion. You must distort to transform what is called appearance into image.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.