143 quotes
Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.
Southey's Colloquies on Society', The Edinburgh Review (1830)
The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.
I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.
Milton', The Edinburgh Review (1825)
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
History of England (1849)
The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.
If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed have to wait forever.
Milton', The Edinburgh Review (1825)
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
Moore's Life of Lord Byron', The Edinburgh Review (1830)
We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.
Milton', The Edinburgh Review (1825)
It seems that the creative faculty, and the critical faculty, cannot exist together in their highest perfection.
John Dryden', The Edinburgh Review (1828)
It is our deliberate opinion that the French Revolution, in spite of all its crimes and follies, was a great blessing to mankind.
As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.
Milton', The Edinburgh Review (1825)
Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.
On Mitford's History of Greece', Knight's Quarterly Magazine (1824)
The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.
Essay on Horace Walpole (1833)
That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.
On Mitford's History of Greece', Knight's Quarterly Magazine (1824)
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.
Milton', The Edinburgh Review (1825)
Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.
Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim.
His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.
John Dryden', The Edinburgh Review (1828)
Was none who would be foremost
To lead such dire attack;
But those behind cried, "Forward!"
And those before cried, "Back!"
Lays of Ancient Rome (1842)