Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.

The business of banking ought to be simple. If it is hard it is wrong. The only securities which a banker, using money that he may be asked at short notice to repay, ought to touch, are those which are easily saleable and easily intelligible.

To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.

In my youth I hoped to do great things; now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.

A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.

Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.