That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.

I wondered whether the scientific modern brain could not get to the stage of realising that Space is not an empty homogeneous medium, but full of intricate differences, intelligible and real, though not with our common reality.

The sea has formed the English character and the essential England is to be found in those who follow it. From blue waters they have learned mercifulness, and they have also learned - in the grimmest of schools - precision and resolution. The sea endures no makeshifts. If a thing is not exactly right it will be vastly wrong.

A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different.

History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.

The book trade is a spiritual barometer of a nations well-being.

"What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie?" he asked. "The sense of competence," was the answer, given without hesitation.