Letters on England

The necessity of saying something, the perplexity of having nothing to say, and a desire of being witty, are three circumstances which alone are capable of making even the greatest writer ridiculous.

Human reason is so little able, merely by its own strength, to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, that it was absolutely necessary religion should reveal it to us. It is of advantage to society in general, that mankind should believe the soul to be immortal; faith commands us to do this; nothing more is required, and the matter is cleared up at once.

this thought has met with the fate of many other useful projects, of being applauded and neglected.

The very essence of things is totally changed. You neither are agreed upon the definition of the soul nor on that of matter. Descartes, as I observed in my last, maintains that the soul is the same thing with thought, and Mr. Locke has given a pretty good proof of the contrary. Descartes asserts farther, that extension alone constitutes matter, but Sir Isaac adds solidity to it. How furiously contradictory are these opinions! Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites (Virgil).

Descartes gave sight to the blind. These saw the errors of antiquity and of the sciences. The path he struck out is since become boundless [....] In fathoming this abyss no bottom has been found. We are now to examine what discoveries Sir Isaac Newton has made in it.

He was natural and sublime, but had not so much as a single spark of good taste, or knew one rule of the drama.

How many things here do I not want (Voltaire when in London.