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.

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.

As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.

Boswell is the first of biographers.

He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.

In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.

In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.