The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits; for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.

There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.

Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.

Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.

My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons.