But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.

Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world have a chance for it.

A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.

We think of Euclid as of fine ice; we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own-to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.