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

All people are most credulous when they are most happy.

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.

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

The characteristic merit of the English constitutions is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable, while its efficient part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple and modern.

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

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.