Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.

Every sect clamors for toleration when it is down.

The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belonged to intellectual superiority.

More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning.

Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic.

A Grecian history, perfectly written should be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts.

Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.