The father of confederation is deadlock.

Ancient history, besides the still unequalled excellence of the writers, is the best instrument for cultivating the historical sense.

America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and the ugliest are the most pretentious.

Above all nations is humanity.

In my youth,geology was nervously striving to accommodate itself to Genesis. Now it is Genesis that is striving to accommodate itself to geology.

The materials of the novelist must be real; they must be gathered from the field of humanity by his actual observation.

Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?