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

A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.

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.

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.

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 being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

An influential member of parliament has not only to pay much money to become such, and to give time and labour, he has also to sacrifice his mind too - at least all the characteristics part of it that which is original and most his own.