A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against his own sympathies...

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

The soul of man is not a thing which comes and goes, is builded and decays like the elemental frame in which it is set to dwell, but a very living force, a very energy of God's organic will, which rules and moulds this universe.

Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.