More good things in life are lost by indifference than ever were lost by active hostility.

Thinking ahead, what really happens to us will depend on how many people we have who are of the great and sober and dynamic middle-class - the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones.

My headmaster chastised me with a diabolical instrument a leather strap tacked to a piece of wood but he taught me with such villainous success that I am now Prime Minister.

When people meet my wife they think better of me. They say: "With a wife like that, he can't be as bad as we thought".

The kind of people I myself represent in parliament; salary earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers and so on, these are, in a political and economic sense, the middle class. They are for the most part unorganised and unselfconscious.

A manager may be tough and practical, squeezing out, while the going is good, the last ounce of profit and dividend . . .

I did but see her passing by and yet I love her till I die.