This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.

The people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement.

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness; for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use.

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

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

It is very rare, indeed, for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculations upon the cause of it. I have constantly observed that the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behind in their politics.