To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

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

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.

Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity.

The perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.