[A] man and still more the woman, who can be accused either of doing "what nobody does," or of not doing "what everybody does," is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency.

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

A government with all this mass of favours to give or to withhold, however free in name, wields a power of bribery scarcely surpassed by an avowed autocracy, rendering it master of the elections in almost any circumstances but those of rare and extraordinary public excitement.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

Whatever helps to shape the human being - to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not - is part of his education.

The maxim is, that whatever can be affirmed (or denied) of a class, may be affirmed (or denied) of everything included in the class. This axiom, supposed to be the basis of the syllogistic theory, is termed by logicians the dictum de omni et nullo.

Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself.