Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.

The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny.

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

Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded.

Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.