William E. Gladstone Quotes

Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won't have to hunt for happiness.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

No one ever became great except through many and great mistakes.

Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble calling; not a mean and groveling thing that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny.

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.

Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.

Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.

I have known ninety-five of the world's great men in my time, and of these eighty-seven were followers of the Bible.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

National injustice is the surest road to national downfall.

If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you.

Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race.

My only hope for the world is in bringing the human mind into contact with divine revelation.

Be thorough in all you do; and remember that although ignorance often may be innocent, pretension is always despicable.

One example is worth a thousand arguments.

All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.

To call a man a characteristically Oxford man is, in my opinion, to give him the highest compliment that could be paid to any human being.

Thrift of time will repay you in after-life with a thousandfold of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams.

You cannot fight against future. Time is on its side.

Commerce is the equalizer of the wealth of nations.

A rational reaction against irrational excesses and vagaries of skepticism may * * * readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity.

The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the would.

The errors of former times are recorded for our instruction in order that we may avoid their repition.

The American Revolution was a vindication of liberties inherited and possessed. It was a conservative revolution.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.

Nothing more surely cultivates and embellishes a man than association with refined and virtuous women.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

The ravages of drink are greater than those of war pestilence and famine combined.

To be engaged in opposing wrong affords...but a slender guarantee for being right.

For works of the mind really great there is no old age, no decrepitude. It is inconceivable that a time should come when Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, should not ring in the ears of civilized man.

Avarice, where it has full dominion, excludes every other passion.

Swimming for his life, a man does not see much of the country through which the river winds.

Man is to be trained chiefly by studying and by knowing man.

[The British constitution] presumes more boldly than any other the good sense and the good faith of those who work it.

It is no use for the honorable member to shake his head in the teeth of his own words.

I venture to say that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution.

Decision by majorities is as much an expedient as lighting by gas.

To serve Armenia is to serve civilization.

Is not that state a warning and a judgment for our heavy sins as a nation?

The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted.

The oppression of a majority is detestable and odious; the oppression of a minority is only by one degree less detestable and odious.

He is the purest figure in history. About George Washington

If Germany is to become a colonizing power, all I say is, God speed her! She becomes our ally and partner in the execution of the great purposes of Providence for the advantage of mankind.

Economy is the first and great article (economy such as I understand it) in my financial creed. The controversy between direct and indirect taxation holds a minor, though important place.

Budgets are not merely affairs of arithmetic, but in a thousand ways go to the root of prosperity of individuals, the relation of classes and the strength of kingdoms.

The idea of abolishing Income Tax is to me highly attractive, both on other grounds and because it tends to public economy.

I am certain, from experience, of the immense advantage of strict account-keeping in early life. It is just like learning the grammar then, which when once learned need not be referred to afterwards.

I was tenaciously opposed by the governor and deputy-governor of the Bank, who had seats in parliament, and I had the City for an antagonist on almost every occasion.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence conservatism distrust of the people tempered by fear.