"I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors."

“Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.”

“The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.”

“Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.”

“The dust and silence of the upper shelf.”

“In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.”

“I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.”