The reasons why I did not foreacquaint you with it (to deal with the same plainness that I have used) were these. I knew my presen...t estate less than fit for her, I knew (yet I know not why) that I stood not right in your opinion. I knew that to have given any intimation of it had been to impossibilitate the whole matter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As long as you don't fly openly in the face of society, society doesn't ask any inconvenient questions; and it makes precious shor...t work of the cads who do. There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The fact alone that both, like Chatham before them, were great war ministers, links their names inseparably. Beyond that, they sha...red many qualities in common: unquenchable vitality, restless energy, personal magnetism, and an inspiring power of oratory. They were alike also in their defects: opportunism, total lack of consideration for others, and a degree of egotism that can only be termed infantile. Lloyd George, however, whom Lord Haldane once called "an illiterate with an unbalanced mind," lacked both the versatility and the intellectual power of Churchill. Where Sir Winston found relaxation in Macauley or Gibbon, Lloyd George in his prime amused himself with cheap detective fiction. The latter, cast in an inferior mold, lacked also the personal courage of his younger colleague and successor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have accepted a pension as a reward which has been thought due to my literary merit; and now that I have this pension, I am the ...same man in every respect that I have ever been; I retain the same principles. It is true that I cannot now curse ... the House of Hanover; nor would it be decent for me to drink King James's health in the wine that King George gives me money to pay for. But, Sir, I think that the pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover, and drinking King James's health, are amply overbalanced by three hundred pounds a year.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sir Walter, being strangely surprised and put out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the fac...e. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face the gentleman that sat next to him and said "Box about: 'twill come to my father anon."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Annie: Dances like Pavaliver, that child. George Grainger: Dances like who?... Annie: Pavaliver--the Russian dancer. Don't be so ignorant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Away with the cant of "Measures, not men!"Mthe idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot al...ong. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
George the first was an honest, dull, German gentleman, as unfit as unwilling to act the part of a king, which is to shine and to ...oppress. Lazy and inactive even in his pleasures, which were therefore lowly sensual. He was coolly intrepid, and indolently benevolent. He was diffident of his own parts, which made him speak little in public, and prefer in his social, which were his favourite, hours the company of wags and buffoons. Even his mistress, the duchess of Kendal, with whom he passed most of his time, and who had all influence over him, was very little above an idiot.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »