One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

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

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.

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.

The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.

A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.

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.