The moderns cannot reach their beauties, but can avoid their imperfections.
Among those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure.
The first race of mankind used to dispute, as our ordinary people do now-a-days, in a kind of wild logic, uncultivated by rule of art.
There is a great amity between designing and art.
One would fancy that the zealots in atheism would be exempt from the single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervor of religion. But so it is, that irreligion is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended upon it.
Round-heads and Wooden-shoes are standing jokes.
The Fear of Death often proves Mortal.
Who does not more admire Cicero as an author than as a consul of Rome?
The utmost we can hope for in this world is contentment; if we aim at anything higher, we shall meet with nothing but grief and disappointment. A man should direct all his studies and endeavors at making himself easy now and happy hereafter.
Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man’s own making...
A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.
A few persons of an odious and despised country could not have filled the world with believers, had they not shown undoubted credentials from the divine person who sent them on such a message.
We have in England a particular bashfulness in every thing that regards religion.
I have sent for you that you may see how a Christian may die.
It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves; but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion.
Were I to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: the first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies.
Talk not of love: thou never knew’st its force.
Our friends don’t see our faults, or conceal them, or soften them.
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.