No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. It...makes you think that after all, your favorite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded....Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it.

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.

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.

A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

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.