I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God.

Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions.

If anybody would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, and gardens and fine dinners, and wine, and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be a king.

Thus, then, stands the case. It is good, that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history.

Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic.