In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.

Sense can support herself handsomely in most countries on some eighteen pence a day; but for fantasy, planets and solar systems, will not suffice.

Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.

A government cannot be wrong in punishing fraud or force, but it is almost certain to be wrong if, abandoning its legitimate function, it tells private individuals that it knows their business better than they know it themselves.

Boswell is the first of biographers.

He [Charles II] was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.

The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration.