We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

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

Boswell is the first of biographers.

We are free, we are civilised, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilisation.

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.

It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.