And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.

There is no country in Europe which is so easy to over-run as Spain; there is no country which it is more difficult to conquer.

Those who have read history with discrimination know the fallacy of those panegyrics and invectives which represent individuals as effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established systems, and imprinting a new character on their age. The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd suppose.

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.

The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets. Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second.

I am always nearest to myself," says the Latin proverb.