Admiration is one of the most bewitching, enthusiastic passions of the mind; and every common moralist knows that it arises from novelty and surprise, the inseparable attendants of imposture.

Enthusiasm is that temper of the mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judgment.

Orthodoxy is my doxy - heterodoxy is another man's doxy.

Without enthusiasm, the adventurer could never kindle that fire in his followers which is so necessary to consolidate their mutual interests; for no one can heartily deceive numbers who is not first of all deceived himself.

Reason is the test of ridicule, not ridicule the test of truth.

The Egyptians, by the concurrent testimony of antiquity, were among the first who taught that the soul was immortal.

High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of.