“Some of our philosophizing divines have too much exalted the faculties of our souls, when they have maintained that by their force mankind has been able to find out God.”

Deathless laurel is the victor’s due.

Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped; And they have kept it since by being dead.

The bravest men are subject most to chance.

When we view elevated ideas of Nature, the result of that view is admiration, which is always the cause of pleasure.

Love is not in our choice but in our fate.

When a man’s life is under debate, The judge can ne’er too long deliberate.

Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own; he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

What precious drops are those, Which silently each other’s track pursue, Bright as young diamonds in their faint dew?

Few know the use of life before ’tis past.

A happy genius is the gift of nature.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the radiant sun, Is Nature’s eye.

And that the Scriptures, though not everywhere Free from corruption, or entire, or clear, Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, entire In all things which our needful faith require.

Pity only on fresh objects stays, but with the tedious sight of woes decays.

Let Fortune empty her whole quiver on me, I have a soul that, like an ample shield, Can take in all, and verge enough for more; Fate was not mine, nor am I Fate’s: Souls know no conquerors.

Love is love’s reward.

Fattened in vice, so callous and so gross, he sins and sees not, senseless of his loss.

Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one’s faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one’s memories.

Faith … that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.

when it comes to their essential faculty as writers, all writers are androgynous beings.

Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities.

The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests.