"There is nothing in itself valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, but as it acquires these attributes from the mind of the person who surveys it."

"To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a true philosopher."

"The greater the object, the less it can be conceived by the imagination."

"Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which ha…"

"The life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster."