Wherever there is excessive wealth, there is also in the train of it excessive poverty.

A man's vanity tells him what is honor, a man's conscience what is justice.

Authors are like cattle going to a fair: those of the same field can never move on without butting one another.

Religion is the eldest sister of philosophy: on whatever subjects they may differ, it is unbecoming in either to quarrel, and most so about their inheritance.

Absurdities are great or small in proportion to custom or insuetude.

Kings play at war unfairly with republics; they can only lose some earth, and some creatures they value as little, while republics lose in every soldier a part of themselves.

Be assured that, although men of eminent genius have been guilty of all other vices, none worthy of more than a secondary name has ever been a gamester. Either an excess of avarice or a deficiency of what, in physics, is called excitability, is the cause of it; neither of which can exist in the same bosom with genius, with patriotism, or with virtue.