 The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be. |
| No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation. |
| Honor sinks where commerce long prevails. |
| A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault. |
| So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable. |
| The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen. |
| The real essence of work is concentrated energy. |
| Life is a school of probability. |
| All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape. |
| A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life. |
| No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist. |
| So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong. |
| One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. |
| A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself. |
| You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor. |
| Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind. |
| The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other. |
| In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best. |
| Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them. |
| Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders. |
