People go on quarrelling and fancying this and that, and thinking that the world is full of romance and poetry. When they get married they know better.
The apostle of Christianity and the infidel can meet without a chance of a quarrel; but it is never safe to bring together two men who differ about a saint or a surplice.
Men and not measures are, no doubt, the very life of politics. But then it is not the fashion to say so in public places.
Men will love to the last, but they love what is fresh and new. A woman’s love can live on the recollection of the past, and cling to what is old and ugly.
Ride at any fence hard enough, and the chances are you’ll get over. The harder you ride the heavier the fall, if you get a fall; but the greater the chance of your getting over.
Equality would be a heaven, if we could attain it.
When any body of statesmen make public asservations by one or various voices, that there is no discord among them, not a dissentient voice on any subject, people are apt to suppose that they cannot hang together much longer.
Things to be done offer themselves, I suppose, because they are in themselves desirable; not because it is desirable to have something to do.
Mr Palliser was one of those politicians in possessing whom England has perhaps more reason to be proud than of any other of her resources, and who, as a body, give to her that exquisite combination of conservatism and progress which is her present strength and best security for the future.
The girl can look forward to little else than the chance of having a good man for her husband; a good man, or if her tastes lie in that direction, a rich man.
The circumstances seemed to be simple; but they who understood such matters declared that the duration of a trial depended a great deal more on the public interest felt in the matter than upon its own nature.
The idea of putting old Browborough into prison for conduct which habit had made second nature to a large proportion of the House was distressing to Members of Parliament generally.
Rights and rules, which are bonds of iron to a little man, are packthread to a giant.
We can generally read a man’s purpose towards us in his manner, if his purposes are of much moment to us.
An editor is bound to avoid the meshes of the law, which are always infinitely more costly to companies, or things, or institutions, than they are to individuals.
A Minister can always give a reason; and, if he be clever, he can generally when doing so punish the man who asks for it. The punishing of an influential enemy is an indiscretion; but an obscure questioner may often be crushed with good effect.
But the school in which good training is most practiced will, as a rule, turn out the best scholars.
Flirting I take to be the excitement of love, without its reality, and without its ordinary result in marriage.
It is the necessary nature of a political party in this country to avoid, as long as it can be avoided, the consideration of any question which involves a great change.
There is such a difference between life and theory.