The perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.

In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals.

More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning.

An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.

The desire of posthumous fame and the dread of posthumous reproach and execration are feelings from the influence of which scarcely any man is perfectly free, and which in many men are powerful and constant motives of action.

It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.

We never could clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing.