There is no wisdom like frankness.

Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.

Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mankind may supply us with facts; but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the work of our own minds.

An insular country, subject to fogs, and with a powerful middle class, requires grave statesmen.

She is an excellent creature, but she can never remember which came first, the Greeks or the Romans.

Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.

If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.