“The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.” — Horace Walpole

Alexander at the head of the world never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school.

I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.

How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.

When a Frenchman reads of the garden of Eden, I do not doubt but he concludes it was something approaching to that of Versailles, with clipped hedges, berceaus, and trellis work.