Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them

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True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting

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Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever

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Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none

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To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting

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To govern according to the sense, and agreeably to the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of government. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil

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Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness; for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use

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Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume

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There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear

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There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity

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