History sometimes acts as madly as heredity, and her most unpredictable performances are often her most glorious.

Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, 'In your lifetime, have you known peace?' wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word 'Yes,' if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, 'No, there was fear, there were our enemies without, our rulers within, there was prison, there was torture, there was violent death.

... to lovers innumerable things do not matter.

I see the main problem of my life, and indeed anybody's life, as the balancing of competitive freedoms ... a sense of mutual obligations that have to be honored, and a legal system which can be trusted to step in when that sense fails.

The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.

I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game.

I always have beauty around me, for I have but to go to my piano, and trace one of the million designs that have been made by my masters.