The wrong that rouses our angry passions finds only a medium in us; it passes through us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have suffered.
It's all one web, sir. The prosperity of the country is one web.
Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses but by actions!
[It is easier] to quell emotion than to incur the consequences of venting it.
There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.
Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change - only to give stability to one beautiful moment.