The chief-justice was rich, quiet, and infamous.

But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams; and, in those Manchesters and Birminghams, hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

In perseverance, in self command, in forethought, in all virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed.

The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.

Even the law of gravitation would be brought into dispute were there a pecuniary interest involved.

There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.