William Ewart Gladstone

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

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.

Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won’t have to haunt for happiness

Failure is success if we learn from it.

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

Justice delayed is justice denied.

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life.

Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

All mankind love a lover.

Every person is a God in embryo. Its only desire is to be born.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

The city is recruited from the country.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

I see the whole concept of Generation X implies that everyone has lost hope.