With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.

In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.

Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models; and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.

I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilisation would perish; or order and property would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish.