A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
The best reason why monarchy is a strong government is that it is an intelligible government: the mass of mankind understand it and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
The greatest please in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success.
To a great experience one thing is essential - an experiencing nature.
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people: it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
Business is really more agreeable than pleasure it interests the whole mind . . . more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.
The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.