William E. Gladstone Quotes

Censure and criticism never hurt anybody. If false, they can’t hurt you unless you are wanting in manly character; and if true, they show a man his weak points, and forewarn him against failure and trouble.

Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own.

A rational reaction against irrational excesses and vagaries of skepticism may * * * readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity.

All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.

The hopelessness of the Turkish Government should make me witness with delight its being swept out of the countries which it tortures. Next to the Ottoman Government nothing can be more deplorable and blameworthy than jealousies between Greek and Slav and plans by the States already existing for appropriating other territory. Why not Macedonia for the Macedonians as well as Bulgaria for the Bulgarians and Serbia for the Serbians?

Nothing more surely cultivates and embellishes a man than association with refined and virtuous women.

There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolut

To call a man a characteristically Oxford man is, in my opinion, to give him the highest compliment that could be paid to any human being.

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books – even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

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

The errors of former times are recorded for our instruction in order that we may avoid their repition.