If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.

[I can] scarcely write upon mathematics or mathematicians. Oh for words to express my abomination of the science.

A perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque; yet he must control it so absolutely as to content himself with the materials which he finds, and to refrain from supplying deficiencies by additions of his own. He must be a profound and ingenious reasoner; yet he must possess sufficient self-command to abstain from casting his facts in the mould of his hypothesis.

A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.