In on summer they have done their business... they have completely pulled down to the ground their monarchy, their church, their nobility, their law, their revenue, their army, their navy, their commerce, their arts, and their manufactures... destroyed all balances and counterpoises which serve to fix a state and give it steady direction, and then they melted down the whole into one incongrous mass of mob and democracy... the people, along with their political servitude, have thrown off the yoke of law and morals.

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

Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers, are capable of being incendiaries.

Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them.

Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause.

The men of England,- the men, I mean, of light and leading in England.

The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.