England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for both of us. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it.

The perfection of conversation is not to play a regular sonata, but, like the AEolian harp, to await the inspiration of the passing breeze.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

Men are as much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of prosperity.

As mankind becomes more enlightened to know their real interests, they will esteem the value of agriculture; they will find it in their natural--their destined occupation.