It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.

Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.

[Slavery] is a weed that grows in every soil.

Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.