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

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

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

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 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.

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

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.

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

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

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.

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

My point is that love is the most powerful motivator in the world. It spurs mortals to greatness. Their noblest, bravest acts are done for love.

If I were a bird, I will have no feet.

Sadness is a bruise on the skin of memory.

The sentimentalist ages far more quickly than the person who loves his work and enjoys new challenges.

An aristocratic culture does not advertise its emotions. In its forms of expression it is sober and reserved. Its general attitude is stoic.

I never tried to sing like anybody else, fortunately I didn't sound like anybody else. It just happened.

Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from...the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.

Do the things you used to do, and you'll feel the feelings you used to feel.

Our world, like a charnel-house, is strewn with the detritus of dead epochs.

As poets, our lamentations are glorious, filled with the virtues angles would learn to envy.