The moral perfections of the Deity, the more attentively, we consider, the more perfectly still shall we know them.

Our admiration of a famous man lessens upon our nearer acquaintance with him; and we seldom hear of a celebrated person without a catalogue of some notorious weaknesses and infirmities.

To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.

In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

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

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

I always rejoice when I see a tribunal filled with a man of an upright and inflexible temper, who in the execution of his country's laws can overcome all private fear, resentment, solicitation, and even pity it self. Whatever passion enters into a sentence or decision, so far will there be in it a tincture of injustice. In short, justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind, that we may suppose her thoughts are wholly intent on the equity of a cause, without being diverted or prejudiced by objects foreign to it.