“The art of reading is to skip judiciously.”

Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.

A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.

The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right.

Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.

Dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.

Vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty.

There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.

Give all the power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all the power to the few, they will oppress the many.

Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquillity, it must be respectable – even to observe neutrality, you must have a strong government.

I always feel how necessary you are to me. But when you are absent, I become still more sensible of it and look around in vain for that satisfaction which you alone can bestow.

Men are reasoning rather than reasonable animals.

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

Who talks most about freedom and equality? Is it not those who hold the bill of rights in one hand and a whip for affrighted slaves in the other?

Nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.

The art of being helpful is behaving as if everything we do matters – because we never know which things might.

If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?

Life is earnest, art is gay.

The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one’s own human failing.

We don’t all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ The understanding of art depends finally upon one’s willingness to extend one’s humanity and one’s knowledge of human life.