There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

Reform, that we may preserve.

Language is the machine of the poet.

Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school--its abstract doctrines for the initiated; its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables, for the vulgar.

Even the law of gravitation would be brought into dispute were there a pecuniary interest involved.

A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.