There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed upon. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they would be by the perfidy of others.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting.

Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation.

Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.

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.