To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts; in a uniform manner.

A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.

There is nothing touches our imagination so much as a beautiful woman in a plain dress.