No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.

There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.

To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.

False taste is always busy to mislead those that are entering upon the regions of learning; and the traveller, uncertain of his way, and forsaken by the sun, will be pleased to see a fainter orb arise on the horizon, that may rescue him from total darkness, though with weak and borrowed lustre.

A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.

As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.

All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.