The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then.

As freely as the firmament embraces the world, so mercy must encircle friend and foe. The sun poursforth impartially his beams through all the regions of infinity; heaven bestows the dew equally on every thirsty plant. Whatever is good and comes from on high is universal and without reserve: but in the heart's recesses darkness dwells.

Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable - as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead.

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.

Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men.

Foster the beautiful, and every hour thou tallest new flowers to birth.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.