A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is torn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion.

A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly.... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China.

I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it.

The pride of men will not often suffer reason to have scope until it can be no longer of service.

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

A jealous lover lights his torch from the firebrand of the fiend.

Parliament is a deliberate assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purpose, not local prejudices ought to guide but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.