The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.
We are taught words, not ideas.
At present the peace of the world has been preserved, not by statesmen, but by capitalists.
Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.
Of all unfortunate men one of the unhappiest is a middling author endowed with too lively a sensibility for criticism.
In the study of the fine arts, they mutually assist each other.
In art the Greeks were the children of the Egyptians. The day may yet come when we shall do justice to the high powers of that mysterious and imaginative people.
A great thing is a great book; but a greater thing than all is the talk of a great man.
Coalitions though successful have always found this, that their triumph has been brief.
Difficulties melt away under tact.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
It is well-known what a middleman is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.
He was one of these men who think that the world can be saved by writing a pamphlet.
The sweet simplicity of the three percents.
Is man an ape or an angel? Now I am on the side of the angels.
Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.
Governments do not govern, but merely control the machinery of government, being themselves controlled by the hidden hand.
The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age.
I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar.
Accent and emphasis are the pith of reading; punctuation is but secondary.
Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.