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.

The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world have a chance for it.

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy - people who really have that in a superior degree by nature are independent of the forms and habits and artifices by which less able and less active people are kept up to their labors.