An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.

Boswell is the first of biographers.

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him; he changed his mind, and went to the oars.

Those who have read history with discrimination know the fallacy of those panegyrics and invectives which represent individuals as effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established systems, and imprinting a new character on their age. The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd suppose.

A dominant religion is never ascetic.

The business of everybody is the business of nobody.

We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative.