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 d….

Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperi….

As to happiness in this life it is hardly compatible with that diminished respect which ever attends the relinquishing of labour..

My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest….

We cannot bring ourselves to believe it possible that a foreigner should in any respect be wiser than ourselves. If any such point out to us our foll….

A man can't do what he likes with his coverts..

I never believe anything that a lawyer says when he has a wig on his head and a fee in his hand. I prepare myself beforehand to regard it all as mere….

Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions a….

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

I have read - nay, I have bought! - Carlyle's 'Latter Day Pamphlets,' and look on my eight shillings as very much thrown away. To me it appears that ….

People go on quarrelling and fancying this and that, and thinking that the world is full of romance and poetry. When they get married they know bette….

It is necessary to get a lot of men together, for the show of the thing, otherwise the world will not believe. That is the meaning of committees. But….

It is the test of a novel writer's art that he conceal his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there..

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 ….

My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere..

To oblige a friend by inflicting an injury on his enemy is often more easy than to confer a benefit on the friend himself..

Neither money nor position can atone to me for low birth..

Oxford is the most dangerous place to which a young man can be sent..

When men think much, they can rarely decide..

A bull in a china shop is not a useful animal, nor is he ornamental, but there can be no doubt of his energy. The hare was full of energy, but he did….

As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate paren….