A certain excess of animal spirits with thoughtless good-humor will often make more enemies than the most deliberate spite and ill-nature, which is on its guard, and strikes with caution and safety.

Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.

The devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate; he supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Truth from the mouth of an honest man and severity from a good-natured man have a double effect.

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.