A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.

Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.

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

The peculiar essence of our banking system is an unprecedented trust between man and man. And when that trust is much weakened by hidden causes, a small accident may greatly hurt it, and a great accident for a moment may almost destroy it.

Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.

In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.

The business of banking ought to be simple. If it is hard it is wrong. The only securities which a banker, using money that he may be asked at short notice to repay, ought to touch, are those which are easily saleable and easily intelligible.