"Upon the present occasion London was full of clergymen. The specially clerical clubs, — the Oxford and Cambridge, the Old University, and the Athenaeum, — were black with them."

"He had a prophecy to make, and prophets have ever been energetic men."

"In political matters it is very hard for a man in office to be purer than his neighbours, — and, when he is so, he becomes troublesome."

"He was essentially a truth-speaking man, if only he know how to speak the truth."

"I don’t know about that. — A poet doesn't want to marry a poetess, nor a philosopher a philosopheress."

"Then Lady Chiltern argued the matter on views directly opposite to those which she had put forward when discussing the matter with her husband."

"Audacity in wooing is a great virtue, but a man must measure even his virtues."

"No doubt he had acted in direct opposition to the spirit of the injunction, but legal orders are read by the letter, and not by the spirit."

"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."

"But Mr. Slide did not know that he was lying, and did not know that he was malicious. The weapon which he used was one to which his hand was accustomed, and he had been lead by practice to believe that the use of such weapons by one in his position was not only fair, but also beneficial to the public."

"The grace and beauty of life will be clean gone when we all become useful men."

"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."

"With her broad face, and her double chin, and her heavy jowl, and the beard that was growing around he lips, she did not look like a romantic woman; but, in spite of appearances, romance and a duck-like waddle may go together."

"And, after a fashion, she herself believed what she was saying. Nevertheless, her nature was much nobler than his; and she know that no man should dare to live idly as the Duke had lived."

"Some people fall to their feet like cats; but you are one of those who never fall at all. Others tumble about in the most unfortunate way, without any great fault of their own."

"He had never done any good, but he had always carried himself like a duke, and like a duke he carried himself to the end."

"They were always together, but I dare say it was Platonic. I believe these kind of things generally are Platonic."

"Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes."

"The double pleasure of pulling down an opponent, and of raising oneself, is the charm of a politician’s life."

"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."

"He had married, let us say for love; — probably very much by chance."

"Late hours, nocturnal cigars, and midnight drinkings, pleasurable through they may be, consume too quickly the free-flowing lamps of youth, and are fatal at once to the husbanded candle-ends of age."

"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."

"But the prospect of an explanation, — or otherwise of a flight, — between two leading politicians will fill the House; and any allusion to our Eastern Empire will certainly empty it."

"The vehemence with which his insolence was abused by one after another of those who spoke later from the other side was ample evidence of its success."

"We do believe, — the majority among us does so, — that if we live and die in sin we shall after some fashion come to great punishment, and we believe also that by having pastors among us who shall be men of God, we may best aid ourselves and our children in avoiding this bitter end. But then the pastors and men of God can only be human, — cannot be altogether men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness. The torturing and the burning, as also to speak truth the luxury and the idleness, have, among us, been already conquered, but the idea of ascendancy remains."

"But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling."

"There would be a blaze and a confusion, in which timid men would doubt whether the constitution would be burned to tinder or only illuminated; but that blaze and that confusion would be dear to Mr. Daubney if he could stand as the centre figure, — the great pyrotechnist who did it all, red from head to foot with the glare of the squibs with which his own hands were filling all the spaces."

"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."

"He possessed the rare merit of making a property of his time and not a burden."

"It is out of nature that any man should think it good that his own order should be repressed, curtailed, and deprived of its power. If we go among cab-drivers or letter-carriers, among butlers or gamekeepers, among tailors or butchers, among farmers or grazers, among doctors or attorneys, we shall find in each set of men a conviction that the welfare of the community depends upon the firmness with which they, — especially they, — hold their own."

"Rights and rules, which are bonds of iron to a little man, are packthread to a giant."

"Some few sublime and hot-headed gentleman muttered the word “impeachment.” Others, who were more practical and less dignified, suggested that the Prime Minister “ought to have his head punched.”"

"The property of manliness in a man is a great possession, but perhaps there is none that is less understood, — which is more generally accorded where it does not exist, nor more frequently disallowed where it prevails."

"Lord Chiltern recognizes the great happiness of having a grievance. It would be a pity that so great a blessing should be thrown away upon him."

"When one wants to be natural, of necessity one becomes the reverse of natural."

"“They have been saying ever so long that the old Duke of Omnium means to marry her on his deathbed, but I don’t suppose there can be anything in it.” “Why should he put it off for so very inopportune an occasion?” asked Phineas."

"What binds him, Oswald? A man can’t be bound without a penalty."

"A drunkard or a gambler may be weaned from his ways, but not a politician."

"Why not? His wife is dead, and he hasn’t got a child, not yet an acre of property. I don’t know who is entitled to break his neck if he is not."

"Why is it that when men and women congregate, though the men may beat the women in numbers by ten to one, and through they certainly speak the louder, the concrete sound that meets the ears of any outside listener is always a sound of women’s voices?"

"Would it not be better to go home and live at the family park all the year round, and hunt, and attend Quarter Sessions, and be able to declare morning and evening with a clear conscience that the country was going to the dogs? Such was the mental working of many a Conservative who supported Mr. Daubeny on this occasion."

"When you have done the rashest thing in the world it is very pleasant to be told that no man of spirit could have acted otherwise."

"In former days, when there were Whigs instead of Liberals, it was almost a rule of political life that all leading Whigs sould be uncles, brothers-in-law, or cousins to each other. This was pleasant and gave great consistency to the party; but the system has now gone out of vogue."

"You men find so many angels in your travels. You have been honester than some. You have generally been off with the old angel before you were with the new, — as far at least as I knew."

"In former days the Earl had been a man quite capable of making himself disagreeable, and probably had not yet lost the power of doing so. Of all our capabilities this is the one which clings longest to us."

"Men when they are true are simple. They are often false has hell, and then they are crafty as Lucifer. But the man who is true judges others by himself, — almost without reflection. A woman can be true as steel and cunning at the same time."

"“Why should he do it at all?” asked Phineas. “That’s what everybody asks, but the answer seems to be so plain! Because he can do it, and we can’t.”"