A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where myster...y begins justice ends?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men are apt to mistake, or at least to seem to mistake, their own talents, in hopes, perhaps, of misleading others to allow them t...hat which they are conscious they do not possess. Thus lord Hardwicke valued himself more upon being a great minister of state, which he certainly was not, than upon being a great magistrate, which he certainly was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He was good-natured to a degree of weakness, even to tears, upon the slightest occasions. Exceedingly timorous, both personally an...d politically, dreading the least innovation, and keeping, with a scrupulous timidity, in the beaten track of business as having the safest bottom.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He was as jealous of his power as an impotent lover of his mistress, without activity of mind enough to enjoy or exert it, but cou...ld not bear a share even in the appearances of it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
His eloquence was of every kind, and he excelled in the argumentative as well as in the declamatory way. But his invectives were t...errible, and uttered with such energy of diction, and stern dignity of action and countenance, that he intimidated those who were the most willing and the best able to encounter him. Their arms fell out of their hands, and they shrunk under the ascendant which his genius gained over theirs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pr...ide is the base suspicion of ignorance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »