Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction.

We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.

Political truth is libel; religious truth, blasphemy.

It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man.

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.

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery.