He Who Would Write Heroic Poems Should

For, Strictly Considered, What Is All Knowledge Too But Recorded Experience, And A Product Of History; Of Which, Therefore, Reasoning And Belief, No Less Than Action And Passion, Are Essential Materials?

Endurance Is Patience Concentrated.

At Worst, Is Not This An Unjust World, Full Of Nothing But Beasts Of Prey, Four-footed Or Two-footed?

Men Are To Be Guided Only By Their Self-interests. Good Government Is A Good Balancing Of These; And, Except A Keen Eye And Appetite For Self-interest, Requires No Virtue In Any Quarter. To Both Parties It Is Emphatically A Machine: To The Discontented, A Taxing-machine; To The Contented, A Machine For Securing Property. Its Duties And Its Faults Are Not Those Of A Father, But Of An Active Parish-constable.

Originality Is A Thing We Constantly Clamour For, And Constantly Quarrel With; As If, Observes Our Author Himself, Any Originality But Our Own Could Be Expected To Content Us! In Fact All Strange Thing Are Apt, Without Fault Of Theirs, To Estrange Us At First View, And Unhappily Scarcely Anything Is Perfectly Plain, But What Is Also Perfectly Common.