Experience teaches, it is true; but she never teaches in time.

It is strange what society will endure from its idols.

there can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal ... we cannot reform for a time or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy.

Ignorance, far more than idleness, is the mother of all the vices; and how recent has been the admission, that knowledge should be the portion of all? The destinies of the future lie in judicious education; an education that must be universal, to be beneficial.

Jealousy ought to be tragic, to save it from being ridiculous.

I hate the word 'ought' - it always implies something dull, cold, and commonplace. The 'ought nots' of life are its pleasantest things.

I cannot see why a taste for the country should be held so very indispensable a requisite for excellence; but really people talk of it as if it were a virtue, and as if an opposite opinion was, to say the least of it, very immoral.