Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in small things.

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

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

We must succumb to the general influence of the times. No man can be of the tenth century, if he would; be must be a man of the nineteenth century.

Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor.

The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution.

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.