Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them.

There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm.

But silence never shows itself to so great an advantage, as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them.

They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.

There is nothing in which men more deceive themselves than in what they call zeal.

But in all despotic governments, though a particular prince may favour arts and letter, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind.

Virgil has very finely touched upon the female passion for dress and shows, in the character of Camilla; who though she seems to have shaken off all the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in this particular.