And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?
The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
The puritan hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.
The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.
The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.
He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.
An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.
As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.
Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.
I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.
Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.
Reform, that we may preserve.
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?
A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.
