Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.

Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.

There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers; we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness.

Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.

If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.

We are so curiously made that one atom put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for life.

It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.