It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors

It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.

It is in the middle classes of society that all the finest feeling, and the most amiable propensities of our nature do principally nourish and abound. For the good opinion of our fellow-men is the strongest though not the purest motive to virtue. The privations of poverty render us too cold and callous, and the privileges of property too arrogant and confidential, to feel; the first places us beneath the influence of opinion--the second, above it.

The science of legislation is like that of medicine in one respect: that it is far more easy to point out what will do harm than what will do good.

Sir Richard Steele has observed, that there is this difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England: the one professes to be infallible, the other to be never in the wrong.

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.