Orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.

A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice.

Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.

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

The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.

The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

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