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

Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.

Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.

A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.

If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.

Those who seem to load the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing.