With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companio… - Charles Caleb Colton

If we can advance any propositions that are both true and new, these are indisputably our own, by right of discovery; and if we can repeat what is old more briefly and brightly than others, this also becomes our own, by right of conquest.

A free press is the parent of much good in a state. But even a licentious press is a far less evil than a press that is enslaved, because both sides may be heard in the former case, but not in the latter. A licentious press may be an evil, an enslaved press must be so; for an enslaved press may cause error to be more current than wisdom, and wrong more powerful than right; a licentious press cannot efiect these things, for if it give the poison, it gives also the antidote, which an enslaved press withholds. An enslaved press is doubly fatal, it not only takes away the true light, for in that case we might stand still, but it sets up a false one, that decoys us to our destruction.

Those illustrious men, who, like torches, have consumed themselves, in order to enlighten others, have often lived unrewarded, and died unlamented. But the tongues of aftertimes have done them justice in one sense, but injustice in another. They have honoured them with their praise, but they have disgraced them with their pity. They pity them forsooth, because they missed of present praise, and temporal emolument; things great indeed to the little, but little to the great.