John Morley

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

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

I designed them for popular instruction, thinking it of great importance that people in general should know what they were talking about, when they spoke of France or Russia....

The result of my attempt was to convince me that our ignorance of the last sixty years is colossal.

Europe is in an anti-Christian crisis; and having come near the term of life, I have it much at heart to mark my place in this struggle.

Who could wish the stories of Joseph and of Ruth to be otherwise than they are?

Over the two first, human efforts broadly speaking avail nothing; but we have it in our power to modify the two last (of course I include in the terms all that belongs to good and bad, beauty and ugliness).

I have concluded, dating from June, to undertake no portraits and accept no commissions, but, contented with the little I have to live upon, work only with the idea of making my efforts worthy, at least as efforts, of the nation’s…

The course that you purpose is indeed a self-denying, an unworldly, and a noble one.

Certainly a school of social economy that deals only with foreign exchanges and rent and values and the virtues of direct taxes and indirect, and draws the curtain around the question of population, must be a singularly shallow affair.

Gladstone had known Mill so well—his singleminded love of truth, his humanity, his passion for justice—as to call him by the excellent name of “the Saint of Rationalism.” A saint of any sort is surely uncommon enough in our fallen world…

Marriage is the greatest earthly happiness, when founded on complete sympathy.

Gladstone’s gift and inspiration, never expending itself in pensive musings upon the vain ambitions, illusions, cheats, regrets of human life—such moods of half-morbid moralising were not in his temperament—but ever stirring him to duty…

The world’s at war with tyrants—shall I crouch?

The harvest’s ripe—and shall I pause to reap?

I hoped that the ministers would recognise the moral obligations to the subject races of the east, which we had in honour contracted as parties to the Crimean war and to the peace of Paris in 1856.

I acted under a strong sense of individual duty without a thought of leadership; nevertheless it made me again leader whether I would or no.

The nation nobly responded to the call of justice, and recognised the brotherhood of man.

His government is supposed now to stand mainly upon its recent foreign policy: the most selfish and least worthy I have ever known.

Whatever was open to any degree of exception in Palmerston, has this year received a tenfold development in Disraeli.

I am entirely in harmony with you as to your view of the eastern policy.

It has been depressing and corrupting to the country; a healthier air has been generated by indignation at the Bulgarian massacres, which have thrown us back on our rather forgotten humanity.

What he hates is Christian liberty and reconstruction.

He supports old Turkey, thinking that if vital improvements can be averted, it must break down; and his fleet is at Besika Bay, I feel pretty sure, to be ready to lay hold of Egypt as his share.

We, he and I, are much of one mind in thinking the Turks must go out of Bulgaria, though retaining a titular supremacy if they like.