The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.

The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn.

All the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings.

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

A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady; the latter, constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remainder of his virtue after it in despair.

History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.

With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.