“Alexander at the head of the world never tasted the true pleasure that boys of h…” — Horace Walpole

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

The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.

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.