There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt.

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.

The men of England,- the men, I mean, of light and leading in England.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

War is the matter which fills all history; and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.

He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.