The writer who aims at producing the platitudes which are "not for an age, but for all time" has his reward in being unreadable inall ages.... The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only sort of man who writes about all people and about all time.

I can't talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes.

You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.

The statesman cannot govern without stability of belief, true or false.

They tell me that So-and-So, who does not write prefaces, is no charlatan. Well, I am. I first caught the ear of the British public on a cart in Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass bands,and this . . . because . . . I am a natural-born mountebank.

An Englishman does everything on principle: he fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.

Truth telling is not compatible with the defence of the realm.