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

They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.

All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony

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

To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it; and seeing one is quite enough.

Every man has some favorite topic of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end.