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

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

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

The purse strings tie us to our kind.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. It...makes you think that after all, your favorite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded....Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it.

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

If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.