Society and the World

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself.

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the Court, perennially hopeless.

It is contrary to reason to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.

For it is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.

Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

A duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.

When asked what was first in oratory, [he] replied to his questioner, ‘action,’ what second, ‘action,’ and again third, ‘action’.

By convention there is colour, by convention sweetness, by convention bitterness, but in reality there are atoms and space.

What is the world, O soldiers?

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

Politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?

France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war!

Your Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman English.

Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things,

Nature has left this tincture in the blood,

Nature has left this tincture in the blood,

From this amphibious ill-born mob began

One is not born a woman: one becomes one.

[Natural selection] has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.