People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.

There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer - that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.

The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.

Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it.

Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.