When the Prince of Wales [later King George IV] and the Duke of York went to visit their brother Prince William [later William IV]at Plymouth, and all three being very loose in their manners, and coarse in their language, Prince William said to his ship's crew, "now I hope you see that I am not the greatest blackguard of my family.

Letters to absence can a voice impart, And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart.

That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: "Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side.

History is a romance that is believed; romance, a history that is not believed.

I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense--but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd--for sense cannot be counterfeited.

It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.

One's mind suffers only when one is young and while one is ignorant of the world. When one has lived for some time, one learns that the young think too little and the old too much, and one grows careless about both.