“There is nothing which strengthens faith more than the observance of morality.”

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.

Look what a little vain dust we are!

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.

To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.

Wit is the fetching of congruity out of incongruity.

A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view I’m lost, in wonder, love and praise.

Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man’s own making.

When I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves,

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.

Let freedom never perish in your hands.

Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

The awful realization of our mortality

Mass democracy, mass morality and the mass media thrive independently of the individual, who joins them only at the cost of at least a partial perversion of his instincts and insights.

History is not written in the interests of morality.

Only a moral education based on free inner discipline can bring to bear a salutary action and lead to a true morality.

It is only on these principles that we will be able to establish (“pourront être édifiées”, Fr.) the real basis of morality.

Religion is not simply a theory, it is a higher life, of which morality is an integral part – a life devoted to the worship of the good and the true, for God, the absolute, is the supreme source of all perfection”