A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.

We never could clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing.

Books are becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment any choice in life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries...and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.

None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.

That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.