By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.

The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling... When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we every day experience.

Woman is not made to be the admiration of everybody , but the happiness of one.

I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pain of others

Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.

Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.