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.

All people are most credulous when they are most happy.

Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.

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 real essence of work is concentrated energy.

Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.