There may be community of material possessions, but there can never be community of love or esteem.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.

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

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

Ignorance is mere privation by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction: and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget.

Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.