The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.

Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.

If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?

Tis so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so.

I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden.

The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

My errors are by now natural and incorrigible; but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.