There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle

To drive men from independence to live on alms, is itself great cruelty