Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.

• This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.
• Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.
• Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.
• Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.
• Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other.
• The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.
• Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.
• A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.
• There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.
• A propensity to hope and joy is real riches one to fear and sorrow real poverty.