Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.

No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.

It is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles; and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions.

I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.

If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.

Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, among the most useful of sciences, and big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God