I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain.

Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsick qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the senses are consulted, the same pleasures.

There are occasions on which it is noble to dare to stand alone. To be pious among infidels, to be disinterested in a time of general venality, to lead a life of virtue and reason in the midst of sensualists, is a proof of a mind intent on nobler things than the praise or blame of men, of a soul fixed in the contemplation of the highest good, and superiour to the tyranny of custom and example.

We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious adhesion of unwelcome images, as from the evanescence of those which are pleasing and useful.

Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.