People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

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.

Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.

Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.

It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.

This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.