A long novitiate of acquaintance should precede the vows of friendship.

I have read somewhere or other, - in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think, - that history is philosophy teaching by examples.

What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us!

Cunning pays no regard to virtue, and is but the low mimic of reason.

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.

Indifference must be a crime in us, to be ranked but one degree below treachery; for deserting the commonwealth is next to betraying it.

Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness; and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more.