You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Dogs have not the power of comparing. A dog will take a small piece of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him.

As to the Christian religion, besides the strong evidence which we have for it, there is a balance in its favor from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias on the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be a very firm believer.

Of all kinds of credulity, the most obstinate is that of party-spirit; of men, who, being numbered, they know not why, in any party, resign the use of their own eyes and ears, and resolve to believe nothing that does not favor those whom they profess to follow.

I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.

Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.