A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the two great springs of life, Hope and Fear.

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does, he gets beyond his hearers.

What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves.

Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements.

Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.

We as often repent the good we have done as the ill.

Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretences to both.

The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.

We uniformly applaud what is right and condemn what is wrong, when it costs us nothing but the sentiment.