About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.

No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.

An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings?

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

He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign will wonder why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised.

No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry.