We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary.
The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.
Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages.
The chief-justice was rich, quiet, and infamous.
It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds.
The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn.
It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse.
With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.
The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty.
Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear; Although my middle’s left, there’s nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea; What is my tail cut off? A rushing river; And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.
Then none was for a party; Than all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great: Then lands were fairly portioned; Then spoils were fairly sold: The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old.
Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.
Queen Mary had a way of interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and play debts, by asking the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever read her favorite sermon – Dr. Tillotson on Evil Speaking.
Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models; and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.
In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.
The business of everybody is the business of nobody.
He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.
Everybody’s business is nobody’s business.
To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.