There are many faculties in man, each of which takes its turn of activity, and that faculty which is paramount in any period and exerts itself through the strongest nation, determines the civility of that age: and each age thinks its own the perfection of reason.

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

What is addressed to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intellectual beings.

And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim.

We know who is benevolent, by quite other means than the amount of subscriptions to soup-societies. It is only low merits that canbe enumerated.

Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyph to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life before he apprehends it as truth.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.