If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.
There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.
We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.
The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than it – The Territory is worth. Empires which branch out widely are often more flourishing for a little timely pruning.
She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.
Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity.
Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school – its abstract doctrines for the initiated; its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables, for the vulgar.
In that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the great Abbey which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall.
The sweeter sound of woman’s praise.
Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.
Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard.
There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him; he changed his mind, and went to the oars.
Those who seem to load the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing.
Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.
It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
Language is the machine of the poet.
In the modern languages there was not, six hundred years ago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profound scholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books.
In after-life you may have friends – fond, dear friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.