The best way to make ourselves agreeable to others is by seeming to think them so. If we appear fully sensible of their good qualities they will not complain of the want of them in us.

Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

As is our confidence, so is our capacity.

There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.

Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.

No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.