The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

As mankind becomes more enlightened to know their real interests, they will esteem the value of agriculture; they will find it in their natural--their destined occupation.

The people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement.

There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear.

The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.

Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime. A great profusion of things which are splendid or valuable in themselves is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur.