The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof.

The purse strings tie us to our kind.

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

We think of Euclid as of fine ice; we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own-to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.

No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.