We have more versatility of character and manners, and it is we who must conform.

We know what the empire of opinion is in human nature.

I had almost said that the law of opinion was human nature itself.

It is, however, the strongest principle in the composition of the frame of the human mind; and more of the happiness and unhappiness of mankind resides in that inward principle than in all external circumstances put together.

But if such is the empire of opinion even amongst us, it has a pure, unrestrained, complete, and despotic power amongst them.