William E. Gladstone Quotes

Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalty to high ideals.

Swimming for his life, a man does not see much of the country through which the river winds.

The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted.

I have known ninety-five of the world's great men in my time, and of these eighty-seven were followers of the Bible.

Budgets are not merely affairs of arithmetic, but in a thousand ways go to the root of prosperity of individuals, the relation of classes and the strength of kingdoms.

My only hope for the world is in bringing the human mind into contact with divine revelation.

Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.

To be engaged in opposing wrong affords...but a slender guarantee for being right.

No one ever became great except through many and great mistakes.

Thrift of time will repay you in after-life with a thousandfold of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams.

Never forget that the purpose for which a man lives is the improvement of the man himself, so that he may go out of this world having, in his great sphere or his small one, done some little good for his fellow creatures and labored a little to diminish the sin and sorrow that are in the world.

[The British constitution] presumes more boldly than any other the good sense and the good faith of those who work it.

For works of the mind really great there is no old age, no decrepitude. It is inconceivable that a time should come when Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, should not ring in the ears of civilized man.

All the wonders of the Greek civilization heaped together are less wonderful than the single book of Psalms. Greece had all that this world could give her; but the flowers of Paradise blossomed in Palestine alone.

As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Man is to be trained chiefly by studying and by knowing man.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you.

The book must of necessity be put into a bookcase. And the bookcase must be housed. And the house must be kept. And the library must be dusted, must be arranged, must be catalogued. What a vista of toil, yet not unhappy toil!

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.

Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won't have to hunt for happiness.

If Germany is to become a colonizing power, all I say is, God speed her! She becomes our ally and partner in the execution of the great purposes of Providence for the advantage of mankind.

Be thorough in all you do; and remember that although ignorance often may be innocent, pretension is always despicable.

Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.

It is no use for the honorable member to shake his head in the teeth of his own words.

All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.

Is not that state a warning and a judgment for our heavy sins as a nation?

To call a man a characteristically Oxford man is, in my opinion, to give him the highest compliment that could be paid to any human being.

The American Revolution was a vindication of liberties inherited and possessed. It was a conservative revolution.

Commerce is the equalizer of the wealth of nations.

We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.

National injustice is the surest road to national downfall.

Censure and criticism never hurt anybody. If false, they can't hurt you unless you are wanting in manly character; and if true, they show a man his weak points, and forewarn him against failure and trouble.

There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolut

You cannot fight against future. Time is on its side.

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.

I am certain, from experience, of the immense advantage of strict account-keeping in early life. It is just like learning the grammar then, which when once learned need not be referred to afterwards.

One example is worth a thousand arguments.

To serve Armenia is to serve civilization.

Nothing more surely cultivates and embellishes a man than association with refined and virtuous women.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.

Letter to the committee in charge of the celebration of the centennial of the American Constitution. I have always regarded that Constitution as the most remarkable work known to me in modern times to have been produced by the human intellect, at a single stroke (so to speak), in its application to political affairs.

From the time I took office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I began to learn that the State held, in the face of the Bank and the City, an essentially false position as to finance. The Government itself was not to be a substantive power, but was to leave the Money Power supreme and unquestioned.

Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own.

The oppression of a majority is detestable and odious; the oppression of a minority is only by one degree less detestable and odious.

Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble calling; not a mean and groveling thing that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny.