If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters.

Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.

Let no one suppose that the words doctor and patient can disguise from the parties the fact that they are employer and employee.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

Go anywhere in England, where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real centre of the household.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle.

A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.