You think me ambitious: ambition, alas! is composed of more rugged materials. If I were ambitious, I should not for so many years have been a prey to… - Horace Walpole

My aversion to them...springs from the perniciousness of that sect to society—I hate Papists, as a man, not as a Protestant. If Papists were only enemies to the religion of other men, I should overlook their errors. As they are foes to liberty, I cannot forgive them.

Good men are never concerned in revolutions, because they will not go the lengths. Sunderland caused the revolution of 1688, while Devonshire stood aloof—the latter was the angel, the former the storm. Bad men and poisonous plants are sometimes of superlative use in skilful hands.

The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel– a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.