The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

Without dancing you can never attain a perfectly graceful carriage, which is of the highest importance in life.

Governments do not govern, but merely control the machinery of government, being themselves controlled by the hidden hand.

Some will read only old books, as if there were no valuable truths to be discovered in modern publications: others will only read new books, as if some valuable truths are not among the old. Some will not read a book because they know the author: others . . . would also read the man.

I am neither a Whig nor Tory. My politics are described in one word and that word is England.

All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character or illustrates an existence.

A parsimony of words prodigal of sense.