Talk not of love: thou never knew’st its force.
Our admiration of a famous man lessens upon our nearer acquaintance with him; and we seldom hear of a celebrated person without a catalogue of some notorious weaknesses and infirmities.
Supposing all the great points of atheism were formed into a kind of creed, I would fain ask whether it would not require an infinite greater measure of faith than any set of articles which they so violently oppose.
Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.
Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may indulge in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings.
A man with great talents, but void of discretion, is like Polyphemus in the fable, strong and blind, endued with an irresistible force, which for want of sight is of no use to him.
Nothing lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals.
There is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato’s description of the Supreme Being, – that truth is His body and light His shadow. According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood.
Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.
It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them.
My heart leaps at the trumpet’s voice.
Nothing makes men sharper than want.
In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.
Wit is the fetching of congruity out of incongruity.
I would have every zealous man examine his heart thoroughly, and I believe he will often find that what be calls a zeal for his religion is either pride, interest, or ill-repute.
A brother’s sufferings claim a brother’s pity.
Music, among those who were styled the chosen people, was a religious art.
It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world; or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.
There is nobody so weak of invention that cannot make some little stories to villify his enemy.
Religion prescribes to every miserable man the means of bettering his condition; nay, it shows him that the bearing of his afflictions as he ought to do, will naturally end in the removal of them.