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.

Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.

We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.

I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it.

When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.

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.

Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.