What a strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known are better than the things we have known.

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.

None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems can be persuaded by the most specious rhetorician that the lots of life are equal; yet it cannot be denied that every one has his peculiar pleasures and vexations, that external accidents operate variously upon different minds, and that no man can exactly judge from his own sensations what another would feel in the same circumstances.

Falsehood always endeavors to copy the mien and attitude of truth.

A translator is to be like his author; it is not his business to excel him.

Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.