Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.

Life is a school of probability.

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

We think of Euclid as of fine ice; we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own-to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.

A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.

Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.