A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy cannot stand.

Belief in a future life is the appetite of reason.

Children are what the mothers are.

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

There is a desire of property in the sanest and best men, which Nature seems to have implanted as conservative of her works, and which is necessary to encourage and keep alive the arts.

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

If there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no doubt, if there were no doubt, there would be no inquiry; if no inquiry, no wisdom, no knowledge, no genius; and Fancy herself would lie muffled up in her robe, inactive, pale, and bloated.