Queen Mary had a way of interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and play debts, by asking the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever read her favorite sermon--Dr. Tillotson on Evil Speaking.

The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticize.

It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.

The hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence.

[I can] scarcely write upon mathematics or mathematicians. Oh for words to express my abomination of the science.