Ship of the line is the most honourable thing that man, as a gregarious animal, has ever produced.

The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as the greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.

What is in reality cowardice and faithlessness, we call charity, and consider it the part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men's evil practice for the sake of their accurate faith, and sometimes to forgive their confessed heresy for the sake of their admirable practice.

I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is coloured by "chlorophyll," which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured green by a thing which is called "green leaf," we should see more precisely how far we had got.

They are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love change.

The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to its dependency of language or expression.

The constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts, and to strengthen them for the help of others.