It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.

I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.

I don't mind your thinking slowly; I mind your publishing faster than you think.

So true it is, that nature has caprices which art cannot imitate.

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.

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.

The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical.