Men often prove the violence of their own prejudices, even by the violence with which they attack the prejudices of other people.

It has been said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they are more lasting than those of the body; but I do not remember to have heard it said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they make those of the body more lasting.

Though love and hatred are as opposites as fire and water, yet do they sometimes subsist in the breast together towards the same person; nay by their very opposition and desire to destroy each other, are they strengthened and increased.

How seldom is generosity perfect and pure! How often do men give because it throws a certain inferiority on those who receive, and superiority on themselves!

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens.

You deny that man is really so prejudiced as I suppose him; talk to him then of some foreign country, ask him what religion he is of.

The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.