The Most Lively Thought Is Still Inferior

Disbelief In Futurity Loosens In A Great Measure The Ties Of Morality, And May Be For That Reason Pernicious To The Peace Of Civil Society.

There Is Only One Vice, Which May Be Found In Life With As Strong Features, And As High A Colouring As Needs Be Employed By Any Satyrist Or Comic Poet; And That Is Avarice.

Liberty Of Thinking, And Of Expressing Our Thoughts, Is Always Fatal To Priestly Power, And To Those Pious Frauds On Which It Is Commonly Founded.

Nothing Is Demonstrable, Unless The Contrary Implies A Contradiction. Nothing, That Is Distinctly Conceivable, Implies A Contradiction. Whatever We Conceive As Existent, We Can Also Conceive As Non-existent. There Is No Being, Therefore, Whose Non-existence Implies A Contradiction. Consequently There Is No Being, Whose Existence Is Demonstrable.

There Is A Set Of Harmless Liars, Frequently To Be Met With In Company, Who Deal Much In The Marvellous. Their Usual Intention Is To Please And Entertain; But As Men Are Most Delighted With What They Conceive To Be The Truth, These People Mistake The Means Of Pleasing, And Incur Universal Blame.