So true it is, that nature has caprices which art cannot imitate.
He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.
With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.
It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England.
A page digested is better than a volume hurriedly read.
We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason.
A government cannot be wrong in punishing fraud or force, but it is almost certain to be wrong if, abandoning its legitimate function, it tells private individuals that it knows their business better than they know it themselves.
And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
By poetry we mean the art of employing of words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words, what the painter does by means of colors.
We are free, we are civilised, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilisation.
A dominant religion is never ascetic.
A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor’s wife.
The effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state.
There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.
Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.
The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?
More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning.
The passages in which Milton has alluded to his own circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest, than any other lines in his poems.
What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one, – and that is not only true, but identical, – that men always act from self-interest.