What am I to choose? "Choose what you please, as long as you choose." There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.

There is a certain consideration, and a general duty of humanity, that binds us not only to the animals, which have life and feeling, but even to the trees and plants. We owe justice to people, and kindness and benevolence to all other creatures who may be susceptible of it. There is some intercourse between them and us, and some mutual obligation.

Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?

I honor most those to whom I show least honor; and where my soul moves with great alacrity, I forget the proper steps of ceremony.

Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes; nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.

The laws of conscience, though we ascribe them to nature, actually come from custom.

It is a human tendency "to measure truth and error by our capacity."