A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place.

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust - ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out, which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.

Society can only be happy and free in proportion as it is virtuous.

Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in. In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century. It may then fairly be inferred, that, till society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education.

Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.

The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.