An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.

Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.