I am apt to think, if we knew what it was to be an angel for one hour, we should return to this world, though it were to sit on the brightest throne in it, with vastly more loathing and reluctance than we would now descend into a loathsome dungeon or sepulchre.

We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.

Religion is the centre which unites, and the cement which connects the several parts of members of the political body.

The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.

Whenever I attempt to frame a simple idea of time, abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind, which flows uniformly, and is participated by all beings, I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties.

If we admit a thing so extraordinary as the creation of this world, it should seem that we admit something strange, and odd, and new to human apprehension, beyond any other miracle whatsoever.

[Christianity] neither enjoins the nastiness of the Cynic, nor the insensibility of the Stoic.