The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical.

It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?

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

Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.

Byron owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry.

Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.