Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.

The business of everybody is the business of nobody.

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.

The temple of silence and reconciliation.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.