To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions.

And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

He had done that which could never be forgiven; he was in the grasp of one who never forgave.

In the modern languages there was not, six hundred years ago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profound scholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books.

Power, safely defied, touches its downfall.

Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.