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.

The Orientals have another word for accident; it is "kismet,"--fate.

What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.

The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.

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.

We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary.

In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.