The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.

Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.

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.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.

Life is a school of probability.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

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.

I started out by believing God for a newer car than the one I was driving. I started out believing God for a nicer apartment than I had. Then I moved up.

A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.

An influential member of parliament has not only to pay much money to become such, and to give time and labour, he has also to sacrifice his mind too – at least all the characteristics part of it that which is original and most his own.

So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.

Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.

The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism – despotism during the campaign – is indispensable.

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men’s thoughts, to speak other men’s words, to follow other men’s habits.

What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Woman absent is woman dead.

An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.

A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.

We must not let daylight in upon the magic.

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 real essence of work is concentrated energy.

Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality – the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

A man’s mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people’s minds.

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

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

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.

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.