The hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

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.

In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern.

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.