Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise.

I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.

Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.

A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly.... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China.

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

Flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not.