Flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not.

"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

It is from this absolute indifference and tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations derive some of the most considerable advantages; because there is nothing to interest the imagination; because the judgment sits free and unbiased to examine the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity, is alike to the understanding, because the same truths result to it from all; from greater from lesser, from equality and inequality.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

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.