1.  The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
 
2.  Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
 
3.  A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
 
4.  A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
 
5.  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.
 
6.  What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
 
7.  Life is a school of probability.
 
8.  The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.
 
9.  The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
 
10. Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men’s thoughts, to speak other men’s words, to follow other men’s habits.
 
11. One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
 
12. Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
 
13. No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
 
14. We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
 
15. Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.