There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.

That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one,--and that is not only true, but identical,--that men always act from self-interest.

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

If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.

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