Walter Bagehot: “The strongest nation has always been conquering the weaker; sometimes even subduing it, but always prevailing over it.”

In early society, originality in life was forbidden and repressed by the fixed rule of life.

They are above corruption because they are the corruptors.

If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity.

But, above all things, they were frightened of 'the world;' the spectacle of nature filled them with awe and dread.