It is undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the inclinations of the people, but they ought to take great care that they do not receive that inclination from the few persons who may happen to approach them.

When a great man has some one object in view to be achieved in a given time, it may be absolutely necessary for him to walk out of all the common roads.

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

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

I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the subject as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

To be struck with His power, it is only necessary to open our eyes.

Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man.