Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.

Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience.

I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.

Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.

Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world.

Language is the dress of thought; every time you talk your mind is on parade.