The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration.

I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.

He [Charles II] was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.

Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.

No man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor.