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.

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

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.

That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.

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

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

Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature,--endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity.