The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.

He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign will wonder why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised.

You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.

It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.

He that wishes to see his country robbed of its rights cannot be a patriot.