Reform, that we may preserve.

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?

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.

We never could clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing.

The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?

Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbors believe all that they profess, and act up to all that they believe!

How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premises so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature.