John Morley

The Universe never filled me with such wonder and awe as when I knew I could not account for it.

Try to do your Duty and you will find what you are fit for.

We believe in no man’s infallibility, but it is restful to be sure of one man’s integrity.

You do not know how those of us regard you, who feel it a joy to live when a premier believes in righteousness.

I felt ready to weep when you were treated with so much contumely by your opponent in your former struggle; and yet I rejoiced that you were educating this nation to believe in conscience and truth....

Men write accepting posts, all excitement, full of hope and assurance of good work, and then we remember how quickly clouds came and the office ended in failure and torment.

We may smile, but surely in good-natured sympathy, at the zeal of poor ladies for a post for husbands of unrecognised merit, or at the importunity of younger sons with large families but inadequate means.

In the Octagon as in any similar repository we come upon plenty of baffled hopes, chagrin in finding a career really ended, absurd over-estimates of self, over-estimates of the good chances of the world, vexation of those who have chosen…

It is borne in upon us how grievously the burden of man’s lot is aggravated by slovenly dates, illegible signatures, and forgetfulness that writing is something meant to be read.

We are reminded how vast a space in our ever-dwindling days is consumed by social invitations and the discovery of polite reasons for evading them.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.—EMERSON.

Be it however, what it may, we politicians are children playing with toys in comparison to that great work of and for manhood, which has to be done, and will yet be done, in restoring belief.

All that I hear from day to day convinces me of the extension of this strange epidemic, for it is not, considering how it comes, worthy of being called a rational or scientific process.

But of the extent of the mischief I do not doubt any more than of its virulence.

For the general business of the country, my ideas and temper are thoroughly out of harmony with the ideas and temper of the day, especially as they are represented in London.

But there is much to be done with the pen, all bearing much on high and sacred ends, for even Homeric study as I view it, is in this very sense of high importance; and what lies beyond this is concerned directly with the great subject of…

My ties will be slight to an assembly with whose tendencies I am little in harmony at the present time; nor can I flatter myself that what is called the public out of doors is more sympathetic.

The main point is this: that setting aside exceptional circumstances which would have to provide for themselves, my prospective work is not parliamentary.

I do not think,” he concluded, “I ever can be sorry for what I have done, but I never can cease to be sorry for the necessity of doing it.

Nor is this work pleasant; but I am as far as possible from repenting of it, as no one else to whom the public would listen saved me the trouble.

The central proposition made a cruel dilemma for a large class of the subjects of the Queen; for the choice assigned to them by assuming stringent logic was between being bad citizens if they submitted to the decree of papal infallibility…

I am not now going to pretend that either foreign foe or domestic treason can, at the bidding of the court of Rome, disturb these peaceful shores.

It is really a case for hitting hard, but for hitting the right men.

What you have said on the subject of ultramontanism and of the mode in which it should be handled, appears to me to be as wise and as good as is possible.

In the maintenance of the pope and his court, followers and agents, six millions of our fellow-subjects or thereabouts are deeply interested; and they are making demands upon us which we are forced to decline.