It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself.

In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves.

That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.

There is something in corruption which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees everything stained and impure.

The prejudice of unfounded belief often degenerates into the prejudice of custom, and becomes at last rank hypocrisy. When men, from custom or fashion or any worldly motive, profess or pretend to believe what they do not believe, nor can give any reason for believing, they unship the helm of their morality, and being no longer honest to their own minds they feel no moral difficulty in being unjust to others.

When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.