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.

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.

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 great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.