Give me the avow’d, th’ erect, the manly foe, / Bold I can meet, perhaps may turn, his blow; / But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, / Save, save, oh! save me from the candid friend.
How ready some people are to admire in a great man the exception rather than the rule of his conduct! Such perverse worship is like the idolatry of barbarous nations, who can see the noonday splendour of the sun without emotion, but who, when he is in eclipse, come forward with hymns and cymbals to adore him.
They who resist indiscriminately all improvement as innovation, may find themselves compelled at last to submit to innovations although they are not improvements.
Time and chance can do nothing for those who will do nothing for themselves. Providence itself can scarcely save a people who are not prepared to make a struggle for their safety.
