A Grecian history, perfectly written should be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts.
We never could clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing.
Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor.
Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbors believe all that they profess, and act up to all that they believe!
In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.
Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.
It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.
Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses.
To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions.
The good-humor of a man elated with success often displays itself towards enemies.
Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.
Byron owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry.
All the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings.
How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premises so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature.
I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilisation would perish; or order and property would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish.
The hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence.
No particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it that, if we provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it with great men.
In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues.
Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.
In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals.