It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. . . . But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not coward enough to admire it.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

There is no such thing as Success....That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey.

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.

Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these?

If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.