My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would suffer much from it.... I got upon a scaffold near the fatal tree so that I could clearly see all the dismal scene.... I was most terribly shocked, and thrown into a very deep melancholy.

Many infidels have maintained that Ignorance is the mother of Devotion.

It is not every man who can be exquisitely miserable, any more than exquisitely happy.

When we know exactly all a man's views and how he comes to speak and act so and so, we lose any respect for him, though we may love and admire him.

A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinter legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to see it done at all.

My mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian ether.

A Sceptick therefore, who because he finds that Truths are not universally received, doubts of their existence, is just as foolish as a man who should try large shoes upon little feet, and little shoes upon large feet, and finding that they did not fit.