A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.

Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.

A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill informed respecting a question: all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must. And if he is a man of ability, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully.

Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.

Language is the machine of the poet.

I don't mind your thinking slowly; I mind your publishing faster than you think.

Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!