The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them. But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes.

O Lord! I don't know which is the worst of the country, the walking or the sitting at home with nothing to do.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

Never repeat old grievances.

[...] any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.