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.

In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.

Silence is golden but when it threatens your freedom it's yellow.

Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in almost every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself, more or less, with all our pleasures.

All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning of interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state.

General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.