Power, safely defied, touches its downfall.

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

Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in small things.

War is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter.

We must judge of a form of government by it's general tendency, not by happy accidents

How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old.

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.