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?

We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative.

He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.

The real object of the drama is the exhibition of human character.

More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning.

With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.

The passages in which Milton has alluded to his own circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest, than any other lines in his poems.