Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.
A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.
I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes.
If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve.
