The study of the properties of numbers, Plato tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shopkeepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essences of things.

The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.

A beggarly people, A church and no steeple.

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

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.

The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical.