Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.

The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.

Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.

Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.

Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.... An attempt to scrutinize men's thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.