Where error is irreparable, repentance is useless.

In every deed of mischief he [Comenus] had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.

The ecclesiastical writers, who, in the heat of religious faction, are apt to despise the profane virtues of sincerity and moderation.

The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is...

The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive

All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.

Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism

The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.

We improve ourselves by victories over ourselves. There must be contest, and we must win.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.

Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the...