50 quotes found
“The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips Bronze cheeks and woolly hair The Grecian gods are like the Greeks As keen-eyed cold and fair.”
“The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people who can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquaint...”
“Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one sid...”
“The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to one another; they maintain an atmosphere of unreality, and everyone always lives in an atmosphere of suppressed i...”
“Whatever may be the defects of Gibbon's history, none can deny him a proud precision and a style in marching order.”
“... Practical people have little idea of the practical ability required to write a large book, and especially a large history. Long before you get to the pen, there is an immensity of pure business...”
“... The fame of Gibbon is highest among writers; those especially who have studied for years particular periods included in his theme (and how many those are; for in the East and West he has set hi...”
“... For ancient heroes the exhaustive method is possible: all that can be known of them is contained in a few short passages of Greek and Latin, and it is quite possible to say whatever can be said...”
“... Nothing is so simple as the subject matter of his works. The two greatest of his creations, the character of Satan and the character of Eve, are two of the simplest—the latter probably the very...”
“... Satan is made interesting. This has been the charge of a thousand orthodox and even heterodox writers against Milton.”
“A new Constitution does not produce its full effect as long as all its subjects were reared under an old Constitution, as long as its statesmen were trained by that old Constitution. It is not real...”
“A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.”
“But the mass of the old electors did not analyse very much: they liked to have one of their betters to represent them; if he was rich they respected him much; and if he was a lord, they liked him t...”
“In excited states of the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the tendency of the public perturbation determines what shall and what shall not be dealt with. But, upon the other hand...”
“An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is whol...”
“No orator ever made an impression by appealing to men as to their plainest physical wants, except when he could allege that those wants were caused by some one’s tyranny. But thousands have made th...”
“A cabinet is a combining committee,—a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its f...”
“Cabinet governments educate the nation; the presidential does not educate it, and may corrupt it.”
“Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qu...”
“The masses of Englishmen are not fit for an elective government.”
