Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

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

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

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.

But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.