Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world have a chance for it.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament.

No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.