The highest and noblest thing that history can be is a good story.

I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Is ditchwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.

It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type, but is the crown and flower of all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as all the defects. It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these. The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously.

A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve.

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break.