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.

I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.

The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets. Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second.

It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.

The desire of posthumous fame and the dread of posthumous reproach and execration are feelings from the influence of which scarcely any man is perfectly free, and which in many men are powerful and constant motives of action.

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

The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn.