E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax Quotes

True merit, like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes.

I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford.

Nothing would more contribute to make a man wise than to have always an enemy in his view.

A man that should call everything by its right name would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy.

The past is the best way to suppose what may come.

The more arguments you win, the less friends you will have

If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers.

Most men's anger about religion is as if two men should quarrel for a lady they neither of them care for.

Formality is sufficiently revenged upon the world for being so unreasonably laughed at; it is destroyed, it is true, but it hath the spiteful satisfaction of seeing everything destroyed with it.

Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is very good company by the way.

Gratitude is one of those things that cannot be bought. It must be born with men, or else all the obligations in the world will not create it.

If none were to have Liberty but those who understand what it is, there would not be many freed Men in the world.

A man that steps aside from the world and has leisure to observe it without interest and design, thinks all mankind as mad as they think him.

Friendship cannot live with ceremony, nor without civility.

Gratitude is one of those things that cannot be bought.

The plainer the dress, the greater luster does beauty appear.

A fool hath no dialogue within himself, the first thought carrieth him without the reply of a second.

Men who borrow their opinions can never repay their debts.

The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest of the nation.

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

In our corrupted state, common weaknesses and defects contribute more towards the reconciling us to one another than all the precepts of the philosophers and divines.

A person may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him a prisoner.

The Triumph of Wit is to make your good Nature subdue your Censure; to be quick in seeing Faults, and slow in exposing them. You are to consider, that the invisible thing called a Good Name, is made up of the Breath of Numbers that speak well of you; so that if by a disobliging Word you silence the meanest, the Gale will be less strong which is to bear up your Esteem.

Business is so much lower a thing than learning that a man used to the last cannot easily bring his stomach down to the first.

The several sorts of religion in the world are little more than so many spiritual monopolies.