In after-life you may have friends--fond, dear friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.

Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.

None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.

History, is made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men and woman. All the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions have been extraordinary people; and nine tenths of the calamities that have befallen the human race had no other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires.

Every sect clamors for toleration when it is down.

Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.

The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution.