William Ewart Gladstone

If you weren’t such a great man, you’d be a terrible bore.

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.

Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.

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

No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.

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.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.

Why do the words I want to say, struggle to come out of my mouth. Why does fear have such a grip over me. I shouldn’t have to battle to say all the complimentary things I so desperately want to share. It shouldn’t be this hard, that I have to force myself; it’s wrong that such loving words, should have to be spoken under such duress. I’m aware of how wrong it is, but withholding is all I have known, even though I desire so badly to share my thoughts and feelings with you, as freely as you do with me.

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.

As the births of living creatures, at first, are ill-shapen: so are all Innovations, which are the births of time.

The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

Remember where you came from.