Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

History, is made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men and woman. All the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions have been extraordinary people; and nine tenths of the calamities that have befallen the human race had no other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires.

Thus, then, stands the case. It is good, that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.

Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.

The passages in which Milton has alluded to his own circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest, than any other lines in his poems.

Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic.

A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.