 Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule. |
| Fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity. |
| All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance. |
| Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive. |
| The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events. |
| The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event. |
| Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius. |
| Style is the image of character. |
| The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. |
| Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking. |
| Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery. |
| The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular. |
| Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition. |
| I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being. |
| Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself. |
| History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. |
| But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous. |
