When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

Public calamity is a mighty leveller.

Men are as much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of prosperity.

And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.

Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulations of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.