“We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.”

“Never so sure our rapture to createAs when it touch'd the brink of all we hate.”

“We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.”

“I do not know any moral to be deduced from this view of the subject [of personal character], but one, namely, that we should mind our own business, cultivate our good qualities, if we have any, and irritate ourselves less about the absurdities of other people, which neither we nor they can help. I grant there is something in which I have said which I might be made to glance towards the doctrine of original sin, grace, election, reprobation, or the Gnostic Principle that acts did not determine the virtue or vice of the character; and in those doctrines, so far as they are deducible from what I have said, I agree -- but always with a salvo.”

“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.(1778 - 1830)”

“Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?”

“The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.”