With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.

Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.

To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

A page digested is better than a volume hurriedly read.

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

The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.