The end of government is the happiness of the people.

The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.

A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.

Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.

It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.

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

Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.