In Discussing Barbarism And Christianity I Have

But The Desire Of Obtaining The Advantages, And Of Escaping The Burdens, Of Political Society, Is A Perpetual And Inexhaustible Source Of Discord.

The Value Of Money Has Been Settled By General Consent To Express Our Wants And Our Property, As Letters Were Invented To Express Our Ideas; And Both These Institutions, By Giving A More Active Energy To The Powers And Passions Of Human Nature, Have Contributed To Multiply The Objects They Were Designed To Represent.

Ignorant Of The Arts Of Luxury, The Primitive Romans Had Improved The Science Of Government And War.

[the] Operation Of The Wisest Laws Is Imperfect And Precarious. They Seldom Inspire Virtue, They Cannot Always Restrain Vice.

The Nations, And The Sects, Of The Roman World, Admitted With Equal Credulity, And Similar Abhorrence, The Reality Of That Infernal Art [witchcraft], Which Was Able To Control The Eternal Order Of The Planets, And The Voluntary Operations Of The Human Mind. . . . They Believed, With The Wildest Inconsistency, That This Preternatural Dominion Of The Air, Of Earth, And Of Hell, Was Exercised, From The Vilest Motives Of Malice Or Gain, By Some Wrinkled Hags And Itinerant Sorcerers, Who Passed Their Obscure Lives In Penury And Contempt.