Great talents are naturally driven towards hazard and difficulty; as it is there that they are most sure to find their exercise, and their evidence, and joy in anticipated triumph--the liveliest of all sensations.

Moreover; magnificent desires, when least under the bias of personal feeling, dispose the mind--more than itself is conscious of--to regard commotion with complacency, and to watch the aggravations of distress with welcoming; from an immoderate confidence that, when the appointed day shall come, it will be in the power of intellect to relieve.

There is danger in being a zealot in any cause--not excepting that of humanity.

Nor is it to be forgotten that the incapacity and ignorance of the regular agents of long-established governments do not prevent some progress in the dearest concerns of men; and that society may owe to these very deficiencies, and to the tame and unenterprizing course which they necessitate, much security and tranquil enjoyment.
Nor, on the other hand, (for reasons which may be added to those already given) is it so desirable as might at first sight be imagined, much less is it desirable as an absolute good, that men of comprehensive sensibility and tutored genius--either for the interests of mankind or for their own--should, in ordinary times, have vested in them political power.

The Empire, which they hold, is more independent: its constituent parts are sustained by a stricter connection: the dominion is purer and of higher origin; as mind is more excellent than body--the search of truth an employment more inherently dignified than the application of force--the determinations of nature more venerable than the accidents of human institution.