The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot.

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.

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.

In what we really understand, we reason but little.

The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.

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.

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.