“Although our "gentle air" cannot improve the way hate and envy look, it does seem not to encourage firmness and decision. All is compromise; caution and refinement are everywhere. Everything has to "make a good impression" — whether or not it is any good: the impression is the main thing.”

The Nature, Importance and Liberties of Belief (1873)
Context: A man who has a mere factual nature; a man who perceives without much power of reflection; a man who sees only facts, cannot come to any such judgment of truths as the man, higher than he, who not only perceives facts, but has also, by his mental constitution, the power to reason upon them, and to deduce the generic from the specific — that is, the principle from the facts. If it be investigation into the nature of truth as it is contained in the Word of God, a man's moral disposition will color his beliefs. If one, for instance, be largely conscientious, and endowed with small benevolence, the nature of his mind will make him sensitive to those representations of Scripture which depict God as standing upon law; as maintaining righteousness; as being good and just, rather than benevolent and sympathetic. If, on the other hand, a man be himself kind and benevolent, and if he have little conscientiousness, then the elements of sympathy will predominate in the God that he depicts, and the elements which tend towards legality will be comparatively wanting in him. Evidence of justice and law will make but a small impression on such a man, while evidence of goodness will make a prodigious impression upon him.

Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (Columbia University Press, 1916)

http://www.pagetutor.com/standard/chapter02_part1.html

Misattributed

Agnelli: The Rules of the Game, Vanity Fair (1991)

Vol. I; CCLXXXIV
Lacon (1820)

Source: Lunch Poems

Sec. 82
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)