I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.

I do not wonder that, where the monastick life is permitted, every order finds votaries, and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule, by which they may be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad to supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and court the government of others, when long experience has convinced them of their own inability to govern themselves.

To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of the scholar

Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.

Towering is the confidence of twenty-one.

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.