He <nowiki>[</nowiki>Richard Steele<nowiki>]</nowiki> was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes. - Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

We have classical associations and great names of our own which we can confidently oppose to the most splendid of ancient times. Senate has not to our ears a sound so venerable as Parliament. We respect the Great Charter more than the laws of Solon. The Capitol and the Forum impress us with less awe than our own Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey... The list of warriors and statesmen by whom our constitution was founded or preserved, from De Montfort down to Fox, may well stand a comparison with the Fasti of Rome. The dying thanksgiving of Sydney is as noble as the libation which Thrasea poured to Liberating Jove: and we think with far less pleasure of Cato tearing out his entrails than of Russell saying, as he turned away from his wife, that the bitterness of death was past.

The Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.