Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all events, just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.

Law grows, and though the principles of law remain unchanged, yet (and it is one of the advantages of the common law) their application is to be changed with the changing circumstances of the times. Some persons may call this retrogression, I call it progression of human opinion.

The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself.

Chance is but the pseudonym of God for those particular cases, which he does not choose to acknowledge openly with his own sign manual.

And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were.

In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends, and admiration fill up the interspace; but the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration.

Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.