The true standard of the arts is in every man's power; and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the meanest things in nature, will gi… - Edmund Burke

Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep, — to encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy, — to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautions which distinguish benevolence from imbecility, and without which no man can answer for the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government or of freedom. For want of these, they have seen the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison.

As to great and commanding talents, they are the gift of Providence in some way unknown to us, they rise where they are least expected; they fail when everything seems disposed to produce them, or at least to call them forth.

We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us