University Of Oxford Alumni

"Pitt complained that we lay inactive, while the French pushed on their conquests."

"[Pitt] said he would not come into it; that he thought this country in a situation to give peace to France, and if we were at first firm in our proceedings and did not yield to France, we should soon have a very good peace."

"[Pitt] said he could not allow what I said; that either we were in a situation to receive the law or to give it; that he thought the latter was our case; that therefore it was our business to propose the terms and tell France on what conditions they were to have peace; that it was so at the Peace of Utrecht and it would be absurd to act otherways."

"The only way to have peace is to prepare for war."

"...the day is come when the very inadequate benefits of the treaty of Utrecht, the indelible reproach of the last generation, are become the necessary, but almost unattainable wish of the present, when the empire is no more, the ports of the Netherlands betrayed, the Dutch Barrier treaty an empty sound, Minorca, and with it, the Mediterranean lost, and America itself precarious."

"A gloomy scene for this distressed, disgraced country."

"My Lord, I am sure I can save this country, and no one else can."

"Substitute Tully and Demosthenes in the place of Homer and Virgil; and arm yourself with all the variety of manner, copiousness and beauty of diction, nobleness and magnificence of ideas of the Roman consul; and render the powers of eloquence complete by the irresistible torrent of vehement argumentation, and close and forcible reasoning, and the depth and fortitude of mind of the Grecian statesman."

"He wanted to call this country out of that enervate state, that twenty thousand men from France could shake it. The maxims of our Government were degenerated, not our natives. He wished to see that breed restored, which under our old principles had carried our glory so high!"

"I rejoice to hear that you have begun Homer's Iliad; and have made so great a progress in Virgil. I hope you taste and love those authors particularly. You cannot read them too much: they are not only the two greatest poets, but they contain the finest lessons for your age to imbibe: lessons of honour, courage, disinterestedness, love of truth, command of temper, gentleness of behaviour, humanity, and in one word, virtue in its true significance."

"Our seamen have always been famous for a matchless alacrity and intrepidity in time of danger; this has saved many a British ship, when other seamen would have run below deck, and left the ship to the mercy of the waves, or, perhaps, of a more cruel enemy, a pirate."

"We are now to examine whether it is probable that we shall preserve our commerce and our independence, or whether we are sinking into subjection to a foreign power."

"It must cut up Liberty by the root and poison the Fountain of Publick Security; and who that has an English heart can ever be weary of asserting Liberty?"

"When trade is at stake, it is your last entrenchment; you must defend it, or perish...Sir, Spain knows the consequence of a war in America; whoever gains, it must prove fatal to her...is this any longer a nation? Is this any longer an English Parliament, if with more ships in your harbours than in all the navies of Europe; with above two millions of people in your American colonies, you will bear to hear of the expediency of receiving from Spain an insecure, unsatisfactory, dishonourable Convention?"

"You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light; You common people of the skies, What are you when the sun shall rise?"

"Who God doth late and early pray, More of his grace than gifts to send, And entertains the harmless day With a well-chosen book or friend."

"How happy is he born and taught, That serveth not another's will; Whose armor is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill!"

"Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to."

"He first deceased; she for a little tried To live without him, liked it not, and died."

"Love lodged in a woman's breast Is but a guest."

"I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men's stuff."

"Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all."

"It became normal to have at each of the major courts a resident “ambassador”—a word defined by the English poet and diplomat Sir Henry Wotton in a punning epigram as “a man sent to lie abroad for his country’s good.” Given the time required for travel, and the hazards en route—especially in an age of dynastic and religious warfare—permanent ambassadors offered a convenient substitute for personal summitry. And their detailed reports required the attention of specialist secretaries who oversaw foreign affairs, such as Francis Walsingham in Elizabethan London or Antonio Perez at the court of Philip III. Day-to-day diplomacy tended to slip out of the hands of rulers."

"Advised a young diplomat "to tell the truth, and so puzzle and confound his enemies.""

"Hic jacet hujus sententiæ primus author: DISPUTANDI PRURITUS ECCLESIARUM SCABIES. Nomen alias quære."

"The itch of disputing will prove the scab of churches."

"An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the commonwealth."

"People still say to me, 'What was it like being in such a huge flop?' The amount of hatred and vitriol was surprising."

"Boyfriends? In my life I have had three. Three. Only a handful of people have seen into the Pharaoh's tomb."

"I think that's why I gravitated toward slightly broader... ummm, more conceptual kinds of movies, Underworld and Van Helsing. That was as much as I could actually give. But you're actually more of an animated figure. It does go against the grain, as an actor."

"I sort of ended up in Los Angeles by accident. And it was sort of terrible to be jostled into this position of a fame-hungry starlet. Which is so honestly not me! In fact, I could use a bit more of that because I am such a hermit! So I allowed myself to get really bothered."

"Acting requires so much delving into yourself and exposing yourself, so it's sensible to be wondering, Do I still want to be doing this? But I enjoy the work, and everything is so solid at home. I don't care if they say I've had buttock implants. Or not. I don't care. Go ahead! That's the nice thing about getting to the age I am. I could have said I didn't care before -- but secretly I did. And now I really don't."

"Wit and wisdom are born with a man."

"No man is the wiser for his learning."

"The parish makes the constable, and when the constable is made he governs the parish."

"Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him."

"Gentelmen heve ever been more temperate in their religion than common people, as having more reason."

"Equity is a roguish thing. For Law we have a measure, know what to trust to; Equity is according to the conscience of him that is Chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is Equity. 'T is all one as if they should make the standard for the measure we call a "foot" a Chancellor's foot; what an uncertain measure would this be! One Chancellor has a long foot, another a short foot, a third an indifferent foot. 'T is the same thing in the Chancellor's conscience."

"Commonly we say a judgement falls upon a man for something in him we cannot abide."

"'Tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess."

"Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice; and yet everybody is content to hear."

"Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet."

"Scrutamini scripturas (Let us look at the scriptures). These two words have undone the world."

"The House of Commons is called the Lower House, in twenty Acts of Parliament; but what are twenty Acts of Parliament amongst Friends?"

"Mr. Selden was a person whom no character can part flatter, or transmit in any expressions equal to his merit and virtue. He was of so stupendous learning in all kinds and in all languages, (as may appear in his excellent and transcendent writings,) that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant amongst books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing; yet his humanity, courtesy, and affability was such, that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good nature, charity, and delight in doing good, and in communicating all he knew, exceeded that breeding. His style in all his writings seems harsh and sometimes obscure; which is not wholly to be imputed to the abstruse subjects of which he commonly treated, out of the paths trod by other men; but to a little undervaluing the beauty of a style, and too much propensity to the language of antiquity: but in his conversation he was the most dear discourser, and had the best faculty of making hard things easy, and presenting them to the understanding, of any man that hath been known. Mr. Hyde was wont to say, that he valued himself upon nothing more than upon having had Mr. Selden's acquaintance from the time he was very young; and held it with great delight as long as they were suffered to continue together in London; and he was very much troubled always when he heard him blamed, censured, and reproached, for staying in London, and in the parliament, after they were in rebellion, and in the worst times, which his age obliged him to do; and how wicked soever the actions were which were every day done, he was confident he had not given his consent to them; but would have hindered them if he could with his own safety, to which he was always enough indulgent. If he had some infirmities with other men, they were weighed down with wonderful and prodigious abilities and excellencies in the other scale."

"A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness' sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat."

"You will want a book which contains not man's thoughts, but God's — not a book that may amuse you, but a book that can save you — not even a book that can instruct you, but a book on which you can venture an eternity — not only a book which can give relief to your spirit, but redemption to your soul — a book which contains salvation, and conveys it to you, one which shall at once be the Saviour's book and the sinner's."

"Preachers say, Do as I say, not as I do."

"Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain."

"Wise men say nothing in dangerous times."