When we affect to condemn savages, we should remember that by doing so we asperse our own progenitors; for they were savages also.Who can swear that among the naked British barbarians sent to Rome to be stared at more than 1500 years ago, the ancestor of Bacon might not have been found?--Why, among the very Thugs of India, or the bloody Dyaks of Borneo, exists the germ of all that is intellectually elevated and grand. We are all of us--Anglo-Saxons, Dyaks and Indians--sprung from one head and made in one image.

Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

Standing navies, as well as standing armies, serve to keep alive the spirit of war even in the meek heart of peace. In its very embers and smoulderings, they nourish that fatal fire, and half-pay officers, as the priests of Mars, yet guard the temple, though no god be there.

It is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind.

There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.

Everyone knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything cooly is to do it genteelly.