The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time; but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law; that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.

Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, - judgement, to estimate things at their true value.

All violation of established practice implies in its own nature a rejection of the common opinion, a defiance of common censure, and an appeal from general laws to private judgment: he, therefore, who differs form others without apparent advantage, ought not to be angry if his arrogance is punished with ridicule; if those whose example he superciliously overlooks, point him out to derision, and hoot him back again into the common road.

All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.