James Mackintosh Quotations

It is right to be content with what we have, never with what we are.

Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself.

Whatever is popular deserves attention.

The Commons, faithful to their system, remained in a wise and masterly inactivity.

The frivolous work of polished idleness.

Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations.

Those who differ most from the opinions of their fellow men are the most confident of the truth of their own.

It is not because we have been free, but because we have a right to be free, that we ought to demand freedom. Justice and liberty have neither birth nor race, youth nor age.

Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility.

The feminine graces of Madame de Sevigne's genius are exquisitely charming; but the philosophy and eloquence of Madame de Stael are above the distinction of sex.