Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.

Nnothing tends more to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stagnate. These waters must be troubled, before they can exert their virtues.

The march of the human mind is slow.

There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs.

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

Nothing so effectually deadens the taste of the sublime as that which is light and radiant.

The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.