“To engage in experiments on heat was always one of my most agreeable employments.”

This fixes as it were the latitude and longitude of each discovery, and enables us to place it in that part of the map of human knowledge which it ought to occupy. It likewise enables us to use it in taking bearings and distances, and in shaping our course when we go in search of new discoveries.

Virtue never dwelt long with filth; nor do I believe there ever was a person scrupulously: attentive to cleanliness, who was a consummate villain.

So great is the effect of cleanliness upon man, that it extends even to his moral character.

Logic , like lyrical poetry , is no employment for the middle-aged.

Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labour bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them.

Employment is nature’s physician, and is essential to human happiness.

Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

The European Central Bank has only the first. It has no commitment to keep employment up.

In Britain, what we’ve done is say to 485 million people, ‘You can all come, every one of you. You’re unemployed? You’ve got a criminal record? Please come. You’ve got 19 children? Please come.’ We’ve lost any sense of perspective on this.

It’s a European Union of economic failure, of mass unemployment and of low growth.