Waning moons their settled periods keep, to swell the billows and ferment the deep.

One would fancy that the zealots in atheism would be exempt from the single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervor of religion. But so it is, that irreligion is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended upon it.

A jealous man is very quick in his application: he knows how to find a double edge in an invective, and to draw a satire on himself out of a panegyrick on another.

An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.

An evil intention perverts the best actions, and makes them sins.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.