"Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit."

"Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it: he that fears otherwise, gives advantage to the danger."

"If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change."

"Diligence is the mother of good fortune."

"There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics."

"The young Prince Leopold has the nose of a fairytale prince who has been enchanted by an evil witch."

"Everyone likes flattery, and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel."

"Where knowledge ends, religion begins."

"He has not a single redeeming defect."

"No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married."

"If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune; and if anybody pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity."

"He told Lord Esher that, in talking with the Queen, he observed a simple rule: "I never deny; I never contradict; I sometimes forget.""

"Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones."

"We are the children of the gods, and are never more the slaves of circumstance than when we deem ourselves their masters. What may next happen in the dazzling farce of life, the Fates only know."

"Miss Sands told me that Queen Victoria, who was latterly éprise with Disraeli, one day asked him what was his real religion. "Madam," he replied, "I am the blank page between the Old Testament and the New.""

"You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public men."

"The sweet simplicity of the three per cents."

"If you are not very clever, you should be conciliatory."

"There is no gambling like politics."

"As for that," said Waldenshare, "sensible men are all of the same religion." "Pray, what is that?" inquired the Prince. "Sensible men never tell."

"Real politics are the possession and distribution of power."

"The world is a wheel, and it will all come round right."

"As for our majority... one is enough."

"Without tact you can learn nothing."

"There is no education like adversity."

"The Athanasian Creed is the most splendid ecclesiastical lyric ever poured forth by the genius of man."

"An insular country, subject to fogs, and with a powerful middle class, requires grave statesmen."

"As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information."

"There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation approaches those tenderer feelings which are generally supposed to be peculiar to the individual, and to be the happy privilege of private life, and this is one. Under any circumstances we should have bewailed the catastrophe at Washington; under any circumstances we should have shuddered at the means by which it was accomplished. But in the character of the victim, and even in the accessories of his last moments, there is something so homely and innocent, that it takes the question, as it were, out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy; it touches the heart of nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind. Whatever the various and varying opinions in this House, and in the country generally, on the policy of the late President of the United States, all must agree that in one of the severest trials which ever tested the moral qualities of man he fulfilled his duty with simplicity and strength... When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to fall into gloom and perplexity, for it is ignorant alike of the causes and the consequences of such deeds. But it is one of our duties to reassure them under unreasoning panic and despondency. Assassination has never changed the history of the world. I will not refer to the remote past, though an accident has made the most memorable instance of antiquity at this moment fresh in the minds and memory of all around me. But even the costly sacrifice of a Caesar did not propitiate the inexorable destiny of his country."

""But they deserve their wealth," he added, "nobody grudges it to them. I declare when I was eating that truffle, I felt a glow about my heart that, if it were not indigestion, I think must have been gratitude; though that is an article I had not believed in."

"His Christianity was muscular."

"Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius."

"Nothing is going on, but everybody is afraid of something."

"I don't wish to go down to posterity talking bad grammar."

"It is a very difficult country to move, Mr. Hyndman, a very difficult country indeed, and one in which there is more disappointment to be looked for than success."

"My Lords, the key of India is not Merv, or Herat, or Candahar. The key of India is London. The majesty of sovereignty, the spirit and vigour of your Parliaments, the inexhaustible resources of a free, an ingenious, and a determined people—these are the keys of India."

"Now I must tell that nothing will induce me to support the 3 F's—three fiddlesticks. During a long parliamentary life, and long before I was in Parliament, I have been profoundly convinced, that the greatness and character of this country depended on our landed tenure. All the rest, I look upon, and have ever looked upon, as "leather and prunella". I fear the pass is sold ... I have formally, and even solemnly, warned the house in wh[ich] I now sit, that the landed system of this country would be attacked and invaded by the revolutionary party."

"I receive letters every day asking me to write a manifesto and make a speech; that I am the only man who could do so with effect; and all that. Why should I? I warned the country about Ireland before the General Election and told them to be vigilant, or there would be something happen there, "worse even than famine or pestilence". It has happened. And there have been elections since the Irish Revolution in England, Wales and Scotland, and they have supported the policy of imbecility and treason that has brought about all this disaster."

"The present state of affairs makes me tremble. Old England seems to be tumbling to pieces. I believe that if Constantinople were occupied by a foreign Power to-morrow, we should not stir a foot. Could we? With Ireland in revolution, S. Africa in rebellion, and the Radicals and Jacobins in England so intent on the destruction of the landed interest which is the backbone of the State, that no one will spare any energies to external dangers and disgraces. I never thought that in my time it could come to this!"

"Here everything is dark. A series of storms has destroyed all our hopes which were full of promise. A plentiful hay harvest drowned and the finest wheat the farmers have had for years all laid. It is a scene of ravage, of havoc like a conquered country. It is the last drop in the bitter cup which the landed interest will have to swallow... As for politics, Gladstone will be as fatal to the aristocracy as the weather; and if he were younger the Crown would not be safe."

"Bradlaugh makes the most noise, but the Irish Evictions Bill is much the most serious thing... If the Eviction Act passes, there will not be many more seasons. It is a revolutionary age and the chances are, that even you and I may live to see the final extinction of the great London Season, which was the wonder and admiration of our youth."

"Her Majesty's present Ministers have hitherto been enabled to secure that peace, so necessary to the welfare of all the civilized countries, and so peculiarly the interest of our own. But this ineffable blessing cannot be obtained by the passive principle of non-interference. Peace rests on the presence, not to say the ascendancy, of England in the Councils of Europe... May [the election] return to Westminster a Parliament not unworthy of the power of England and resolved to maintain it!"

"[T]here are some who challenge the expediency of the Imperial character of this realm. Having attempted, and failed, to enfeeble our colonies by their policy of decomposition, they may, perhaps, now recognize in the disintegration of the United Kingdom a mode which will not only accomplish, but precipitate their purpose. The immediate dissolution of Parliament will afford an opportunity to the nation to decide upon a course which will materially influence its fortunes and shape its destiny. Rarely in this century has there been an occasion more critical. The power of England and the peace of Europe will largely depend on the verdict of the country."

"[A] danger, in its ultimate results scarcely less disastrous than pestilence and famine...distracts that country [Ireland]. A portion of its population is attempting to sever the constitutional tie which unites it to Great Britain in that bond which has favoured the power and prosperity of both. It is to be hoped that all men of light and leading will resist this destructive doctrine. The strength of this nation depends on the unity of feeling which should pervade the United Kingdom and its widespread dependencies."

"Action may not always bring happiness but there is no happiness without action."

"Had it not been for you, I should have remained what I was when we first met, a prejudiced, narrow-minded being, with contracted sympathies and false knowledge, wasting my life on obsolete trifles, and utterly insensible to the privilege of living in this wondrous age of change and progress."

"My idea of an agreeable person," said Hugo Bohun, "is a person who agrees with me."

"You know who critics are?— the men who have failed in literature and art."

"I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man."

"Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine- tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing."