What matters in a character is not whether one holds this or that opinion: what matters is how proudly one upholds it.

If one hour's work is enough to govern France, four minutes is all that is needed for Italy. There is no nation more easily frightened; even its poetic imagination predisposes it to fear, and they look upon power as on an image that fills them with terror.

There are only two distinct classes of people on this earth, those who espouse enthusiasm and those who despise it.

Self-love, so sensitive in its own cause, has rarely any sympathy to spare for others.

There is no second country for an Englishman, except a ship and the sea.

The world is the work of a single thought, expressed in a thousand different ways.

Gaiety pleases more when we are assured that it does not cover carelessness.