Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.
If our zeal were true and genuine we should be much more angry with a sinner than a heretic.
There is nothing in which men more deceive themselves than in what they call zeal.
The Obedience of Children to their Parents is the Basis of all Government, and set forth as the measure of that Obedience which weowe to those whom Providence hath placed over us.
It is usual for a Man who loves Country Sports to preserve the Game in his own Grounds, and divert himself upon those that belongto his Neighbour.
The Fashionable World is grown free and easie; our Manners sit more loose upon us: Nothing is so modish as an agreeable Negligence. In a word, Good Breeding shows it self most, where to an ordinary Eye it appears the least.
What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.
Flying would give such occasions for intrigues as people cannot meet with who have nothing but legs to carry them.
The English delight in Silence more than any other European Nation, if the Remarks which are made on us by Foreigners are true.
Whilst I yet live, let me not live in vain.
As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.
An honest man, that is not quite sober, has nothing to fear.
A great large book is a great evil.
The moral virtues, without religion are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warms the soul with more than sensual pleasures.
The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test you may pronounceit true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been a Punn.
Physic is, for the most part, only a substitute for temperance and exercise.
Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of the pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.
A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.
Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.
Honor’s a fine imaginary notion, that draws in raw and unexperienced men to real mischiefs.