“You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.”

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.

I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.

The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes.

London is a roost for every bird.

Never complain and never explain.

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.

Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.

Man is only great when he acts from passion.

There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest;

If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.

Some Italians are geniuses, but you have to find a balance.

You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.

What intrigued me more than anything else was finding out the way in which everything, all of creation.

I used to say I wanted to genuflect to a woman, put her up on a pedestal higher and higher, way up beyond my grasp…Then I’d find another one.

What I find interesting is how close you can run the laughter along the seam of seriousness, and occasionally cross it, so that half the house genuinely doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

All we have to do is find such strength within ourselves. Know how to develop it.