An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.

Chance is the providence of adventurers.

Some people pass through life soberly and religiously enough, without knowing way, or reasoning about it, but, from force of habit merely, go to heaven like fools.

Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery," said I, "still thou art a bitter draught.

Almost one half of our time is spent in telling and hearing evil of one another ... and every hour brings forth something strange and terrible to fill up our discourse and our astonishment.

To have the fear of God before our eyes, and, in our mutual dealings with each other, to govern our actions by the eternal measures of right and wrong:MThe first of these will comprehend the duties of religion;Mthe second, those of morality, which are so inseparably connected together, that you cannot divide these two tableswithout breaking and mutually destroying them both.