Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages.

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

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

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.

History, is made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men and woman. All the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions have been extraordinary people; and nine tenths of the calamities that have befallen the human race had no other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires.

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.