Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

Nine tenths of modern science is in this respect the same: it is the produce of men whom their contemporaries thought dreamers - who were laughed at for caring for what did not concern them - who, as the proverb went, 'walked into a well from looking at the stars' - who were believed to be useless, if anyone could be such.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.

War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.

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

The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.

A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.