I have procured air [oxygen] ... between five and six times as good as the best common air that I have ever met with.

Orthodoxy, my Lord,: said Bishop Warburton, in a whisper, — orthodoxy is my doxy, — heterodoxy is another man's doxy.

The more elaborate our means of our common sense is, the less the common sense it becomes.

The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.

How glorious, then, is the prospect, the reverse of all the past, which is now opening upon us, and upon the world. Government, we may now expect to see, not only in theory and in books but in actual practice, calculated for the general good, and taking no more upon it than the general good requires, leaving all men the enjoyment of as many of their natural rights as possible, and no more interfering with matters of religion, with men's notions concerning God, and a future state, than with philosophy, or medicine.

The feeling of it to my lungs was not sensibly different from that of common air; but I fancied that my breast felt peculiarly light and easy for some time afterwards. Who can tell but that, in time, this pure air may become a fashionable article in luxury. Hitherto only two mice and myself have had the privilege of breathing it.

To me there is in happiness an element of self-forgetfulness. You lose yourself in something outside yourself when you are happy; just as when you are desperately miserable you are intensely conscious of yourself, are a solid little lump of ego weighing a ton.