Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions.

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

To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions.

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.

That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.

No particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it that, if we provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it with great men.

Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses.