Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

Honor's a fine imaginary notion, that draws in raw and unexperienced men to real mischiefs.

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.

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

Religion prescribes to every miserable man the means of bettering his condition; nay, it shows him that the bearing of his afflictions as he ought to do, will naturally end in the removal of them.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honoris a private station.