Coining "Dismal Science" as a nickname for Political Economy

When Pococke inquired of Grotius, where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's (Muhammad's) ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof!

The beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become transparent.

Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path .. A thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do .. To find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him.

Not one false man but doth uncountable evil.

Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier, and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free.

Heroes have gone out; quacks have come in; the reign of quacks has not ended with the nineteenth century. The sceptre is held with a firmer grasp; the empire has a wider boundary. We are all the slaves of quackery in one shape or another. Indeed, one portion of our being is always playing the successful quack to the other.