Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the sons of literature. They are entangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfill, and obliged to write on subjects which they do not understand. Every publication is a new period of time, from which some increase or declension of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero's life are from battle to battle, and of an author's from book to book.

It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans; we may therefore subject them to government.

Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present.

Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him.

Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsick qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the senses are consulted, the same pleasures.