Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

In all assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar property, that over their heads there is room enough; but how to reach it is the difficult point. To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting certain edifices in the air.

How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.