A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.

That which anyone has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportional eagerness and haste.

What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves.

Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority; natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.

Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.

We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

Prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason.