The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events.

The revival of Islam dates from the early years of the 20th century. It was brought about by their humiliation, by their sense of how low they’d fallen compared with the West.

There are certain wicked people in the world that you can’t deal with except by force.

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.

Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.

If Wellington epitomizes the English gentleman, Eisenhower epitomizes the natural American gentleman.

Any stigma will do to beat a dogma.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

The English Bible — a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.

We may have to have a geo-political regrouping or major geo-political changes.

The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.

I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.

It’s a necessary quality of a diplomat or a politician that he will compromise. Uncompromising politicians or diplomats get you into the most terrible trouble.

Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.

The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

Well, if they are trying to kill you, on the whole they’re the people you have to kill, aren’t they?

The puritan hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.

It’s commonly said that people who’ve been ill in childhood and who’ve had an upset education never really regret that they do. It means that you don’t look at the world in the way that...

Greatness is so often a courteous synonym for great success.

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their...

Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues.

To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.

A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.

Men killing other men really is an extraordinary phenomenon. Why does it happen? And how long has it gone on? And have the motives changed?

History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.

Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the...

Good men who exercise power are really the most fascinating of all people.

To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit...

My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.

Nobody should teach anywhere for 25 years, but I did.

The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.

Style is the image of character.

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.

I can’t visualize the situation in which we nuke ourselves into extinction.

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.

Soldiers, when committed to a task, can’t compromise. It’s unrelenting devotion to the standards of duty and courage, absolute loyalty to others, not letting the task go until it’s been done.

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

I don’t look to find an educated person in the ranks of university graduates, necessarily. Some of the most educated people I know have never been near a university.

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.

Some people are more terrorist than others.

Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen...