The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on one of the most innocent and most salutary of human pleasures; and never let us forget, that a tax on innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasure

The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which discerns and the humanity which remedies them

First, a man of sense would have known that a single experiment is not sufficient to establish a general rule even in sciences much less complicated than the science of government; that, since the beginning of the world, no two political experiments were ever made of which all the conditions were exactly alike; and that the only way to learn civil prudence from history is to examine and compare an immense number of cases.

In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad criticsf

A few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron

He had done that which could never be forgiven; he was in the grasp of one who never forgave

A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently

Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs

The sweeter sound of woman’s praise

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!

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

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents

The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical

We must succumb to the general influence of the times. No man can be of the tenth century, if he would; be must be a man of the nineteenth century

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history

Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses

We never could clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing

Every sect clamors for toleration when it is down

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

The business of everybody is the business of nobody

Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn

The upper current of society presents no pertain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows

A dominant religion is never ascetic

Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.

The whole history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally.

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.

The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.

To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions

A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor’s wife

Such night in England ne’er had been, nor ne’er again shall be.

Boswell is the first of biographers

Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors

A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop

At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling.

A beggarly people, A church and no steeple

Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic

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

We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative

In that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the great Abbey which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall.

Ye diners out from whom we guard our spoons

Those who seem to load the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing

If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized

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

Reform, that we may preserve

More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning

The chief-justice was rich, quiet, and infamous.

What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.

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?

The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty

Power, safely defied, touches its downfall

It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less

The end of government is the happiness of the people

The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belonged to intellectual superiority

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.

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

The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration

The desire of posthumous fame and the dread of posthumous reproach and execration are feelings from the influence of which scarcely any man is perfectly free, and which in many men are powerful and constant motives of action

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

If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of

It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen

It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.

Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.

There is no country in Europe which is so easy to over-run as Spain; there is no country which it is more difficult to conquer

Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim

In Plato’s opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon’s opinion, philosophy was made for man

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

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age

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

The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets. Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors

A Grecian history, perfectly written should be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts

She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts

The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature

In the plays of Shakespeare man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws

He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked

The effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state

History begins in novel and ends in essay

In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues

The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken.

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 habit

No man in the world acts up to his own standard of right

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 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

The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than it – The Territory is worth. Empires which branch out widely are often more flourishing for a little timely pruning

That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it

There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse

The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners

Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions

That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy

The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticize