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

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.

The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken.

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.

Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.