“take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool...”

“When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."[Thoughts on Various Subjects]”

“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”

“When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore.”

“That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.”

“It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of decreeing accordingly.”

“Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.”