No man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages.

He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.

In the modern languages there was not, six hundred years ago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profound scholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books.

The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken.

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

Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.