In nature, all is managed for the best with perfect frugality and just reserve, profuse to none, but bountiful to all; never employing on one thing m….

The passion of fear (as a modern philosopher informs me) determines the spirits of the muscles of the knees, which are instantly ready to perform the….

Truth is the most powerful thing in the world, since even fiction itself must be governed by it, and can only please by its resemblance. The appearan….

Men of sense are really all of one religion. But men of sense never tell what it is..

It is the saying of an ancient sage that humor was the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor..

Nothing affects the heart like that which is purely from itself, and of its own nature; such as the beauty of sentiments, the grace of actions, the t….

The face of Truth is not less fair and beautiful for all the counterfeit visors which have been put upon her..

We may have an excellent ear for music, without being able to perform in any kind; we may judge well of poetry, without being poets, or possessing th….

Pedantry and bigotry are millstones, able to sink the best book which carries the least part of their dead weight. The temper of the pedagogue suits ….

Temper, if ungoverned, governs the whole man..

Through certain humors or passions, and from temper merely, a man may be completely miserable, let his outward circumstances be ever so fortunate..

Nothing is more ridiculous than ridicule..

Gravity is of the very essence of imposture; it does not only mistake other things, but is apt perpetually almost to mistake itself..

I would be virtuous for my own sake, though nobody were to know it; as I would be clean for my own sake, though nobody were to see me..

To love the public, to study universal good, and to promote the interest of the whole world, as far as lies within our power, is the height of goodne….

The greatest of fools is he who imposes on himself, and in his greatest concern thinks certainly he knows that which he has least studied, and of whi….

It is the hardest thing in the world to be a good thinker without being a good self examiner..

A right mind and generous affection hath more beauty and charms than all other symmetries in the world besides; and a grain of honesty and native wor….

When men are easy in themselves, they let others remain so..

The heart is never neutral..

The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth. For all beauty is truth..