It will be impossible to bring vice out of fashion if we cannot bring men to an understanding of what it really is; but could we prevail upon a man to examine his vice, to dissect its parts, and view the anatomy of it; to see how disagreeable it is … how despicable and contemptible in its highest fruition; how destructive to his senses, estate, and reputation; how dishonorable, and how beastly, in its public appearances: such a man would certainly be out of love with it.

I was in a kind of Stupidity … I had a Mind full of Horrour … but my Thoughts got no Vent … I had a silent sullen kind of Grief, which cou'd not break out either in Words or Tears.

You go upon different Notions from all the World; and tho' you reason upon it so strongly, that a Man knows hardly what to answer, yet I must own, there is something in it shocking to Nature, and something very unkind to yourself.

Such is the power of words, that mankind is able to act as much evil by their tongues as by their hands; the ideas that are formed in the mind from what we hear are most piercing and permanent.

The knowledge of things, not words, makes a scholar.