There being in the make of an English mind a certain gloom and eagerness, which carries to the sad extreme; religion to fanaticism; free-thinking to atheism; liberty to rebellion.

Of all men living [priests] are our greatest enemies. If it were possible, they would extinguish the very light of nature, turn the world into a dungeon, and keep mankind for ever in chains and darkness.

Make a point never go clear, it is great odds that a man whose habits and the bent of whose mind lie a contrary way, shall be unable to comprehend it. So weak a thing is reason in competition with inclination.

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

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

Our youth we can have but to-day, We may always find time to grow old.

So long as I confine my thoughts to my own ideas divested of words, I do not see how I can be easily mistaken.