Taste, when once obtained, may be said to be no acquiring faculty, and must remain stationary; but knowledge is of perpetual growth and has infinite demands. Taste, like an artificial canal, winds through a beautiful country, but its borders are confined and its term is limited. Knowledge navigates the ocean, and is perpetually on voyages of discovery.

There is a thread in our thoughts as there is a pulse in our feelings; he who can hold the one knows how to think, and he who can move the other knows how to feel.

Everything comes if a man will only wait.

Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

No enemy is indeed so terrible as a man of genius.

A nation has a fixed quantity of invention, and it will make itself felt.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.