Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.

It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.

I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker, by three different lights, in his solitude, his afflictions, and his last moments.... [In these situations such people show themselves] in solitude, incapable or rapture or elevation, ... in distress, [with] a halter or a pistol the only refuge [they] can fly to, ... [and liable to conversion] at the approach of death.

I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker.

It is a certain sign of an ill heart to be inclined to defamation. They who are harmless and innocent can have no gratification that way; but it ever arises from a neglect of what is laudable in a man's self.

Mutual good humor is a dress we ought to appear in wherever we meet, and we should make no mention of what concerns ourselves, without it be of matters wherein our friends ought to rejoice.

Nothing is more silly than the pleasure some people take in "speaking their minds." A man of this make will say a rude thing for the mere pleasure of saying it, when an opposite behavior, full as innocent, might have preserved his friend, or made his fortune.