John Morley Quotations

The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without and to depart.

No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character.

Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.

A proverb is good sense brought to a point.

Even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in the broad, intelligent, and spacious way.

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

You cannot demonstrate an emotion or prove an aspiration.

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

Politics is a field where the choice lies constantly between two blunders.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

A great interpreter of life ought not himself to need interpretation.

Evolution is not a force but a process. Not a cause but a law.

They act as if they supposed that to be very sanguine about the general improvement of mankind is a virtue that relieves them from taking trouble about any improvement in particular.

They are the guiding oracles which man has found out for himself in that great business of ours, of learning how to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.

Three things matter in a speech - who says it, how he says it and what he says, and of the three, the latter matters the least

Labels are devices for saving talkative persons the trouble of thinking

It is not enough to do good; one must do it the right way

The proper memory for a politician is one that knows what to remember and what to forget

It was just a bang and then I heard sirens.

In my creed, waste of public money is like the sin against the Holy Ghost

You can overdo it, both with men and women, but there clearly is a symptom.