The ability to discriminate between that which is true and that which is false is one of the last attainments of the human mind.

They who have reasoned ignorantly, or who have aimed at effecting their personal ends by flattering the popular feeling, have boldly affirmed that 'one man is as good as another'; a maxim that is true in neither nature, revealed morals, nor political theory.

Principles . . . become modified in practice, by facts.

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

On the human imagination, events produce the effects of time. Thus, he who has travelled far and seen much, is apt to fancy that he has lived long; and the history that most abounds in important incidents, soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity.

Death is appalling to those of the most iron nerves, when it comes quietly and in the stillness and solitude of night.

It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil.