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

In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.

He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favour, which an artful flatterer may gradually strengthen, till wishes for a particular qualification are improved to hopes of attainment, and hopes of attainment to belief of possession.

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.

My diseases are an asthma and a dropsy and, what is less curable, seventy-five.

As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.