The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the most imposing personages of the a splendid procession; it is by them that the mob are influenced; it is they who the inspectors cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second hand carriages; no one cares for them or asks about them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendour of those who eclipsed and preceded them.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament.

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

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

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.