Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more.

It is a very easy thing to devise good laws the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.

History is philosophy teaching by example and also by warning.

To converse with historians is to keep good company many of them were excellent men, and those who were not, have taken care to appear such in their writings.

There is so much trouble in coming into the world, and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that it is hardly worth while to be here at all.

I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life. Wise men spend their time in mirth it is only fools who are serious.

It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.

Indifference must be a crime in us, to be ranked but one degree below treachery for deserting the commonwealth is next to betraying it.

What Anacharsis said of the vine may aptly enough be said of prosperity. She bears the three grapes of drunkenness, pleasure, and sorrow and happy is it if the last can cure the mischief which the former work. When afflictions fail to have their due effect, the case is desperate.

Cunning pays no regard to virtue, and is but the low mimic of reason.

A long novitiate of acquaintance should precede the vows of friendship.

God himself, with reverence be it spoken, is not an absolute but a limited monarch, limited by the rule which infinite wisdom prescribes to infinite power.

Our liberty cannot be taken away unless the people are themselves accomplices.