The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.

Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.

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.

Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.

The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.

I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth... I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them.

Sincerity has to do with the connexion between our words and thoughts, and not between our beliefs and actions.