William Ewart Gladstone

Justice delayed is justice denied.

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

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

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

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

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.

Danger – if you meet it promptly and without flinching – you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

It’s not whether you get knocked down, its whether you get back up.

I believe in things that are developed through hard work. I always like people who have developed long and hard, especially through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think what they arrive at is usually a much deeper and more beautiful thing than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning. I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper.

We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose – some for cash and some for political influence. We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

She has lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

I think if we go back and check our record, the Negro has proven beyond a doubt that we have been more than patient in seeking our rights as American citizens.