No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influences of fruition and hope. It offers vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors in a division or assassins in a debate.

Nine-tenths of all existing books are nonsense.

In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbors.

There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.

Why should one say that the machine does not live? It breathes, for its breath forms the atmosphere of some towns.

I grew intoxicated with my own eloquence.

Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.