The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate.

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

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.

Man is by his constitution a religious animal.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

Education is a nation's cheapest defence

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.