Truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.

He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.

Among the lower classes of mankind there will be found very little desire of any other knowledge than what may contribute immediately to the relief of some pressing uneasiness, or the attainment of some near advantage.

An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

Critics ought never to be consulted, but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world, and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may not sometimes be of use to overpower arrogance and repel brutality.

Ease, a neutral state between pain and pleasure ... if it is not rising into pleasure will be falling towards pain.