The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.

There is so much trouble in coming into the world, and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that it is hardly worth while to be here at all.

History is philosophy teaching by example and also by warning.

God himself, with reverence be it spoken, is not an absolute but a limited monarch, limited by the rule which infinite wisdom prescribes to infinite power.

I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life. Wise men spend their time in mirth; it is only fools who are serious.

Lawyers must pry into the recesses of the human heart, and become well acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover the abstract reason of all laws.