Phineas Redux

“Isn‘t there some trouble about money?”

“They wouldn‘t be very rich, Duchess.”

“What a blessing for them! But then, perhaps, they‘d be very poor.”

“They would be rather poor.”

“Which is not a blessing.”

The natural man will probably be manly. The affected man cannot be so.

The property of manliness in a man is a great possession, but perhaps there is none that is less understood, — which is more generally accorded where it does not exist, nor more frequently disallowed where it prevails.

I never believe anything that a lawyer says when he has a wig on his head and a fee in his hand. I prepare myself beforehand to regard it all as mere words, supplied at so much the thousand. I know he‘ll say whatever he thinks most likely to forward his own views.

“Not in the least. I have but one ambition.”

“And that is — ?”

“To be the serviceable slave of my country.”

“A master is more serviceable than a slave,” said the old man.

“No; no; I deny it. I can admit much from you, but I cannot admit that. The politician who becomes the master of his country sinks from the statesman to the tyrant.”

“Would that be justice, ladies?” asked the just man.

“It would be success, Mr. Low, — which is a great deal the better thing of the two.”

Many people talk much, and then very many people talk very much more.

He was essentially a truth-speaking man, if only he know how to speak the truth.

All history, all romance, all poetry and all prose, taught him that perseverance in love was generally crowned with success, — that true love rarely was crowned with success except by perseverance.

I doubt whether patriotism can stand the wear and tear and temptation of the front benches in the House of Commons.

People go on quarrelling and fancying this and that, and thinking that the world is full of romance and poetry. When they get married they know better.

He becomes strenuous, energetic, and perhaps eager for what must after all be regarded as success, and at last he fights for a verdict rather than for the truth.

An enemy might at any time become a friend, but while an enemy was an enemy he should be trodden on and persecuted.

“Perhaps I had better tell you the truth, Mr. Gresham.”

“Oh, certainly,” said the Prime Minister, who knew very well that on such occasions nothing could be worse than the telling of disagreeable truths.

He made his point well; but he made it too often. And an attack of that kind, personal and savage in its nature, loses its effect when it is evident that the words have been prepared. A good deal may be done in dispute by calling a man an ass or a knave, — but the resolve to use the words should have been made only at the moment, and they should come hot from the heart.

The secrets of the world are very marvellous, but they are not themselves half so wonderful as the way in which they become known to the world.

The sober devil can hide his cloven hoof; but when the devil drinks he loses his cunning and grows honest.

Most of the young men rise now by making themselves thoroughly disagreeable. Abuse a Minister every night for half a session, and you may be sure to be in office the other half, — if you care about it.

The double pleasure of pulling down an opponent, and of raising oneself, is the charm of a politician’s life.

To oblige a friend by inflicting an injury on his enemy is often more easy than to confer a benefit on the friend himself.

The grace and beauty of life will be clean gone when we all become useful men.

He possessed the rare merit of making a property of his time and not a burden.

He had married, let us say for love; — probably very much by chance.

In political matters it is very hard for a man in office to be purer than his neighbours, — and, when he is so, he becomes troublesome.

Men and not measures are, no doubt, the very life of politics. But then it is not the fashion to say so in public places.

No doubt he had acted in direct opposition to the spirit of the injunction, but legal orders are read by the letter, and not by the spirit.

Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.

Audacity in wooing is a great virtue, but a man must measure even his virtues.

A Minister can always give a reason; and, if he be clever, he can generally when doing so punish the man who asks for it. The punishing of an influential enemy is an indiscretion; but an obscure questioner may often be crushed with good effect.

Ride at any fence hard enough, and the chances are you’ll get over. The harder you ride the heavier the fall, if you get a fall; but the greater the chance of your getting over.

I don’t know about that. — A poet doesn't want to marry a poetess, nor a philosopher a philosopheress.

He had never done any good, but he had always carried himself like a duke, and like a duke he carried himself to the end.

It is out of nature that any man should think it good that his own order should be repressed, curtailed, and deprived of its power. If we go among cab-drivers or letter-carriers, among butlers or gamekeepers, among tailors or butchers, among farmers or grazers, among doctors or attorneys, we shall find in each set of men a conviction that the welfare of the community depends upon the firmness with which they, — especially they, — hold their own.

A man destined to sit conspicuously on our Treasury Bench, or on the seat opposite to it, should ask the gods for a thick skin as a first gift. The need of this in our national assembly is greater than elsewhere, because the differences between men opposed to each other are smaller.

But Mr. Slide did not know that he was lying, and did not know that he was malicious. The weapon which he used was one to which his hand was accustomed, and he had been lead by practice to believe that the use of such weapons by one in his position was not only fair, but also beneficial to the public.

Late hours, nocturnal cigars, and midnight drinkings, pleasurable through they may be, consume too quickly the free-flowing lamps of youth, and are fatal at once to the husbanded candle-ends of age.

Lord Chiltern recognizes the great happiness of having a grievance. It would be a pity that so great a blessing should be thrown away upon him.

Rights and rules, which are bonds of iron to a little man, are packthread to a giant.

Now a conjuror is I think a very pleasant fellow to have among us, if we know that he is a conjuror; — but a conjuror who is believed to do his tricks without sleight of hand is a dangerous man.

Gentlemen lacking substantial sympathy with their leader found it to be comfortable to deceive themselves, and raise their hearts at the same time by the easy enthusiasm of noise.

Any one prominent in affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man may not look over a hedge.

When the little dog snarls, the big dog does not connect the snarl with himself, simply fancying that the little dog must be uncomfortable.

Men will love to the last, but they love what is fresh and new. A woman’s love can live on the recollection of the past, and cling to what is old and ugly.

But facts always convince, and another man‘s opinion rarely convinces.

He has the power of making the world believe him simply because he has been rich and a duke.

When you have done the rashest thing in the world it is very pleasant to be told that no man of spirit could have acted otherwise.

Flirting I take to be the excitement of love, without its reality, and without its ordinary result in marriage.

When one wants to be natural, of necessity one becomes the reverse of natural.

Men are so seldom really good. They are so little sympathetic. What man thinks of changing himself so as to suit his wife? And yet men expect that women shall put on altogether new characters when they are married, and girls think that they can do so.

He is one of those men who, on marrying, assume that they have at last got a person to do a duty which has always hitherto been neglected.

As for offending him, you might as well swear at a tree, and think to offend it.

Then he would be penniless, with the world before him as a closed oyster to be again opened, and he knew, — no one better, — that this oyster becomes harder and harder in the opening as the man who has to open it becomes older.

It is the necessary nature of a political party in this country to avoid, as long as it can be avoided, the consideration of any question which involves a great change.

A bull in a china shop is not a useful animal, nor is he ornamental, but there can be no doubt of his energy. The hare was full of energy, but he didn't win the race. The man who stands still is the man who keeps his ground.

It may, indeed, be assumed that a man who loses his temper while he is speaking is endeavouring to speak the truth such as he believes it to be, and again it may be assumed that a man who speaks constantly without losing his temper is not always entitled to the same implicit faith.

We all profess to believe when we’re told that this world should be used merely as a preparation for the next; and yet there is something so cold and comfortless in the theory that we do not relish the prospect even for our children.

He too, liked his party, and was fond of loyal men; but he had learned at last that all loyalty must be built on a basis of self-advantage. Patriotism may exist without it, but that which Erie called loyalty in politics was simply devotion to the side which a man conceives to be his side, and which he cannot leave without danger to himself.

A drunkard or a gambler may be weaned from his ways, but not a politician.

Let a man be of what side he may in politics, — unless he be much more of a partisan than a patriot, — he will think it well that there should be some equity of division in the bestowal of crumbs of comfort.

Of all hatreds that the world produces, a wife’s hatred for her husband, when she does hate him, is the strongest.

Men when they are true are simple. They are often false has hell, and then they are crafty as Lucifer. But the man who is true judges others by himself, — almost without reflection. A woman can be true as steel and cunning at the same time.

In former days the Earl had been a man quite capable of making himself disagreeable, and probably had not yet lost the power of doing so. Of all our capabilities this is the one which clings longest to us.