Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.

There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.

A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently.

[I can] scarcely write upon mathematics or mathematicians. Oh for words to express my abomination of the science.

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

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.

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.