William E. Gladstone Quotes - Page 2

Be thorough in all you do; and remember that although ignorance often may be innocent, pretension is always despicable.

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

The ravages of drink are greater than those of war pestilence and famine combined.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

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

The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the would.

The oppression of a majority is detestable and odious; the oppression of a minority is only by one degree less detestable and odious.

There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order.

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.

As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.

Commerce is the equalizer of the wealth of nations.

I am inclined to say that the personal attendance and intervention of women in election proceedings, even apart from any suspicion of the wider objects of many of the promoters of the present movement, would be a practical evil not only of the gravest, but even of an intolerable character.

I think that the principle of the Conservative Party is jealousy of liberty and of the people, only qualified by fear; but I think the principle of the Liberal Party is trust in the people, only qualified by prudence.

We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.

Thrift of time will repay you in after-life with a thousandfold of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams.

Ireland, Ireland. That cloud in the west, that coming storm. That minister of God's retribution upon cruel, inveterate, and but half-atoned injustice! Ireland forces upon us those great social and great religious questions. God grant that we may have courage to look them in the face!

Man is to be trained chiefly by studying and by knowing man.

All the wonders of the Greek civilization heaped together are less wonderful than the single book of Psalms. Greece had all that this world could give her; but the flowers of Paradise blossomed in Palestine alone.

The American Revolution was a vindication of liberties inherited and possessed. It was a conservative revolution.

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.

For works of the mind really great there is no old age, no decrepitude. It is inconceivable that a time should come when Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, should not ring in the ears of civilized man.

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.

A rational reaction against the irrational excesses and vagaries of scepticism may, I admit, readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity. To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.

I am certain, from experience, of the immense advantage of strict account-keeping in early life. It is just like learning the grammar then, which when once learned need not be referred to afterwards.

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