The Prime Minister

Things to be done offer themselves, I suppose, because they are in themselves desirable; not because it is desirable to have something to do.

He had so accustomed himself to wield the constitutional cat-of-nine-tails, that heaven will hardly be happy to him unless he be allowed to flog the cherubim.

People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger.

He never went very far astray in his official business, because he always obeyed the clerks and followed precedents.

You can never teach them, except by the slow lesson of habit.

You Ministers go on shuffling the old cards till they are so worn out and dirty that one can hardly tell the pips on them.

Their support was not needed, therefore they were not courted.

One wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genius; he should be conscientious but by no means strait-laced; he should be cautious but never timid, bold but never venturesome; he should have a good digestion, genial manners, and, above all, a thick skin. These are the gifts we want, but we can't always get them, and have to do without them.

Had some inscrutable decree of fate ordained and made it certain, with a certainty not to be disturbed, that no candidate could be returned to Parliament who would not assert the earth to be triangular, there would rise immediately a clamorous assertion of triangularity among political aspirants. The test would be innocent. Candidates have swallowed, and daily do swallow, many a worse one. As might be this doctrine of a great triangle, so is the doctrine of Home Rule. Why is a gentleman of property to be kept out in the cold by some O'Mullins because he will not mutter an unmeaning shibboleth? "Triangular? Yes, or lozenge-shaped, if you please; but, gentleman, I am the man for Tipperary."

"I am ready to obey as a child; — but, not being a child, I think I ought to have a reason."

It is easy for most of us to keep our hands from picking and stealing when picking and stealing plainly lead to prison diet and prison garments. But when silks and satins come of it, and with the silks and satins general respect, the net result of honesty does not seem to be so secure.

"Aid from heaven you may have," he said, "by saying your prayers; and I don't doubt you ask for this and all other things generally. But an angel won't come to tell you who ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer."

She had married a vulgar man; and, though she had not become like the man, she had become vulgar.

I always thought there was very little wit wanted to make a fortune in the City.

Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.

The girl can look forward to little else than the chance of having a good man for her husband; — a good man, or if her tastes lie in that direction, a rich man.

Your man with a thin skin, a vehement ambition, a scrupulous conscience, and a sanguine desire for rapid improvement is never a happy, and seldom a fortunate politician.