I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian.

It is astonishing that any man can forbear enquiring seriously whether there is a God; whether God is just; whether this life is the only state of existence.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth.

Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

There is no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a perpetual equipoise, and the mind fluctuates between different purposes without determination.