No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.

Safety and certainty in oil lie in variety, and variety alone.

In all the twelve years I was at school no one ever succeeded in making me write a Latin verse or learn any Greek except the alphabet.

Indomitable in retreat, invincible in advance; insufferable in victory.

There is no doubt the charge was an awful gamble and that no normal precautions were possible. The issue as far as I was concerned had to be left to Fortune or to God - or to whatever may decide these things. I am content and shall not complain.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

It is remarkable that Lord Esher should be so much astray...We must conclude that an uncontrollable fondness for fiction forbade him to forsake it for fact. Such constancy is a defect in an historian.