The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.

The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.

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.

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.

Every sect clamors for toleration when it is down.