Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you.

Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.

We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America. It was not until I had seen the water-works at Chicago that I realised the wonders of machinery; the rise and fall of the steel rods, the symmetrical motion of the great wheels is the most beautiful rhythmic thing I have ever seen.

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.