You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason.

The round of a passionate man's life is in contracting debts in his passion, which his virtue obliges him to pay. He spends his time in outrage and acknowledgment, injury and reparation.

The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.

Social sorrow loses half its pain.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.