It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.

How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.

Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.

In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.