When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.

He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.

If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.

In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.

An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads.

A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them fortune.

Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.