I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.

From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise

It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.

Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.

For life affords no higher pleasure, than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labours in any great or laudable undertaking, has his fatigues first supported by hope, and afterwards rewarded by joy... To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time; but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law; that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.