Believers in political faith-healing enjoy a supreme immunity from doubt.

People with theories of life are, perhaps, the most relentless of their kind, for no time or place is sacred from their devastating elucidations.

There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.

The choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation.

History is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others; but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories; it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.

If we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.

The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.