Men are respectable only as they respect.

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come under the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached.

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?.

I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.

The populace drags down the gods to their own level.