The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.

We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative.

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

To carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. When an extreme case calls for that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save blood and money, but to squander them.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

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.

Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.