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.

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

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.

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

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

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.