It is sufficiently humiliating to our nature to reflect that our knowledge is but as she rivulet, our ignorance as the sea. On points of the highest interest, the moment we quit the light of revelation we shall find that Platonism itself is intimately connected with Pyrrhonism, and the deepest inquiry with the darkest doubt.

If we trace the history of most revolutions, we shall find that the first inroads upon the laws have been made by the governors, as often as by the governed.

The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.

Silence is less injurious than a weak reply.

A wise minister would rather preserve peace than gain a victory, because he knows that even the most successful war leaves nations generally more poor, always more profligate, than it found them.

To be a mere verbal critic is what no man of genius would be if he could; but to be a critic of true taste and feeling is what no man without genius could be if he would.

As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm, the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.