The history of England is emphatically the history of progress.

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

We must judge of a form of government by its general tendency, not by happy accidents.

It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it.

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.