To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.

Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.

People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.

Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night.

The incentive to ambition is the love of power.