To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world have a chance for it.

In my youth I hoped to do great things; now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.

The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.

One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament.

A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.