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.

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

The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights - the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.

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.

A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.

The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.