“The proper time to influence the character of a child is about 100 years before he is born.”

“Religion is a way of walking not a way of talking.”

“What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.”

“The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat in the active and passive.”

“The nations which have put mankind and posterity most in their debt have been small states - Israel Athens Florence Elizabethan England.”

“Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.”

“It is said that Mr. Gladstone could persuade most people of most things and himself of anything.”

“Let none of us delude himself by supposing that honesty is always the best policy. It is not.”

“Many people believe they are attracted by God or by Nature when they are only repelled by Man.”

“Man as we know him is a poor creature but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction.”

“The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.”