The Almighty is a wonderful handicapper: He will not give us everything.

All I can say about my mind is that, like a fire carefully laid by a good housemaid, it is one that any match will light.

If Kitchener was not a great man, he was, at least, a great poster.

[On spiritualism:] I always knew the living talked rot, but it's nothing to the rot the dead talk.

[On Austen Chamberlain:] He is more loyal to his friends than to his convictions.

There is nothing more perplexing in life than to know at what point you should surrender your intellect to your faith.

The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. . . . There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.