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

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind

I have often reflected within myself on this unaccountable humor in womankind of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial, and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition.

Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.

If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use.

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

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.