“ When will death come, and in what disposition will it find me? Shall I suffer a thousand pains which will make me die in despair? Shall I die in a transport of joy? Shall I die of an accident? How shall I stand before God? What shall I have to offer Him? Shall I return to Him in fear and necessity, and be conscious of no other feeling but terror? What can I hope for? Am I worthy of Paradise? Or worthy only of Hell? What an alternative! What perplexity! Nothing is so mad as to leave one's safety thus in uncertainty; but nothing is more natural ”

“ To educate is nothing less than to govern; and clerical education means a clerical government, with a despotism as its summit and ignorance as its foundation.
Rome already holds Belgium, and would now seize Paris. We are witnesses of a struggle to the death. Against us is all that manifold power which emerges from the past, the spirit of monarchy, of superstition, of the barrack and of the convent; we have against us temerity, effrontery, audacity, and fear. On our side there is nothing but the light. That is why the victory will be with us. For to enlighten is to deliver. ”

“ Jersey, perhaps, more charming than Guernsey, prettier if less imposing; in Jersey the forest has become a garden; the island is like a bouquet of flowers, of the size of London, a smiling land, an idyll set in the midst of the sea.
The exile soon learns that, though the tyrant has placed him afar, he does not release his hold. Many and ingenious are the snares laid for the banished. A prince calls on you, but though he is of royal blood, he is also a detective of police. A grave professor stays at your house, and you surprise him searching your papers. Everything is permitted against you ”

“ To Right belong the inviolability of human life, liberty, peace; and nothing that is indissoluble, irrevocable, or irreparable. To Law belong the scaffold, sword, and sceptre; war itself; and every kind of yoke, from divorceless marriage in the family to the state of siege in the city. Right is to come and go, buy, sell, exchange; Law has its frontiers and its custom-houses. Right would have free and compulsory education, without encroaching on young consciences ”

“ The sovereignty of the people is the life-giving soul of the nation, universal suffrage its government, the Press its illumination; but they are all really one, and that unity is the republic. It is curious to notice how these principles appear again in the watchword of the republic; for the sovereignty of the people creates liberty, universal suffrage creates equality, and the Press, which enlightens the general mind, creates fraternity. ”

“ Short and painful as were his years, Burns has left behind him a volume in which there is inspiration for every fancy and music for every mood; which lives, and will live in strength and vigour, "to soothe," as a generous lover of genius has said, "the sorrows of how many a lover, to inflame the patriotism of how many a soldier, to fan the fires of how many a genius, to disperse the gloom of solitude, appease the agonies of pain, encourage virtue, and show vice its ugliness." ”

“ Mary possessed a finer and nobler nature than Elizabeth; she was a woman of higher courage and greater conviction, more generous, magnanimous, and confiding, and, apart from her incomparably greater beauty and fascination, she possessed mental endowments fully equal to those of the English queen. But, whilst caution and love of mastery in Elizabeth always saved her from her weakness at the critical moment, Mary Stuart possessed no such safeguards, and was periodically swept along helplessly by the irresistible rush of her amorous passion. ”

“ Nothing is graver than freedom; liberty has burdens of her own, and lays on the conscience all the chains which she unshackles from the limbs. We find rights transforming themselves into duties. Let us therefore take heed to what we are doing; we live in a difficult time and are answerable at once to the past and to the future. The time has come, in this year 1876, to replace commotions by concessions. That is how civilisation advances. For progress is nothing other than revolution effected amicably.
Therefore, legislators and citizens, let us redouble our good-will. ”

“ What do our labours and our troubles and our exiles matter if they have been for the general good; if the human race be indeed passing from December to its April; if the winter of tyrannies and of wars indeed be finished; if superstitions and prejudices no longer fall on our heads like snow; and if, after so many clouds of empire and of carnage have rolled away, we at last descry upon the horizon the rosy dawn of universal peace?
O my brothers, let us be reconciled! Let us set out on the immense highway of peace. Surely there has been enough of hatred. ”

“ For a force within me, combined with an instinctive consciousness of life, counteracted the feeling of despair and drew me out of my misery of soul. I felt that I must study life not merely as it was amongst those like myself, but as it was amongst the millions of the common people. I reflected that knowledge based on reason, the knowledge of the cultured, imparted no meaning to life, but that, on the other hand, amongst the masses of the common people there was an unreasoning consciousness of life which gave it a significance. ”

“ Throughout Europe, the party of fear answers "France." Throughout France, it answers "Paris." In Paris, it blames the Press. But every thoughtful man must see that it is none of these, but is the human spirit.
It is the human spirit that has made the nations what they are. From the beginning, through infinite debate and contradiction, it has sought, unresting, to solve the problem eternally placed before the creature by his Creator. It is the human spirit which takes from age to age the form of the great revolts of history ”

“ Amidst her many weapons, that of marriage and her personal fascination were not forgotten. Twice, at least, she tried to make her love affairs serve her political ambition. Poor, feckless Norfolk was drawn by his vanity and ambition into her net. Love epistles, breathing eternal devotion, passed between them, but murder was behind it all--the murder of Elizabeth, and the subjection of England to Spain to work Mary's vengeance on her foes, and Norfolk lost his head deservedly. ”

“ Thus did moods of joy and despair come and go, till one day, when I was listening to the sounds in a forest, and was still on that day in the early springtide seeking after God in my thoughts, a flash of joy illumined my soul. I realised that the conception of God was not God Himself. I felt that I had only truly lived when I believed in God. God is life. Live to seek God and life will not be without Him. ”

“ It is good news that the King of England has left this morning for Ireland, where they are anxiously awaiting him. He will be better there than here. He is travelling through Brittany like lightning, and at Brest he will find Marshall d'Estrée with transport and frigates ready. He carries large treasure, and the King has given him arms for ten thousand men; as his Majesty of England was saying good-bye, he said, laughing, that he had forgotten arms for himself, and our King gave him his own. Our heroes of romance have done nothing more gallant. ”

“ A double inviolability is the most precious possession of a civilised people--the inviolability of territory and the inviolability of conscience; and as the soldier violates the first, so does the priest violate the other. Yet the soldier does but obey his orders and the priest his dogmas, so that there are only two who are ultimately culpable--Caesar, who slays, and Peter, who lies. There is no religion which has not as its aim to seize forcibly the human soul, and it is to attempts of this kind that France is given up to-day. ”

“ There is no one there who speaks evil of anyone; and I have not to complain of any man, except sometimes of myself when I am dissatisfied with my work. There I live undisturbed by rumours, free from the vicissitudes of hope and fear, conversing only with myself and my books. What a true and genuine life it is; what a delightful and honest repose--surely more to be desired than the highest employments. O sea and solitary shore, secret haunt of the Muses, with how many noble thoughts have you inspired me! ”

“ When Mary lay dying, Feria, the Spanish ambassador, hurried to Hatfield to salute the rising sun, and hinted even thus early that Elizabeth might marry her powerful Spanish brother-in-law. But she resented his patronage, and though she coquetted, as usual, with the proposal of marriage, she took care not to pledge herself or submit England to foreign dictation. To Spain it was vital that England should be at her bidding. If the queen could not marry Philip, surely she could only wed one of his Austrian cousins; or, if not, then England must be conquered by the sword. ”

“ So I felt a return of the terrible feeling of despair.
Being unable to believe in the sincerity of men who did not live consistently with the doctrines they professed, and feeling that they were self-deceived, and, like myself, were satisfied with the lusts of the flesh, I began to draw near to the believers amongst the poor, simple, and ignorant, the pilgrims, monks, and peasants. I found that though their faith was mingled with much superstition, yet with them the whole life was a confirmation of the meaning of life which their faith gave them. ”

“ He prospered rapidly in this congenial atmosphere; but it is at Sabden, not at Manchester, that we see the first monument of his public spirit--a little stone school-house, built as the result of an agitation led by him with as much eager enthusiasm as he ever threw afterwards into great affairs of state.
Between 1833 and 1836 Cobden's character widened and ripened with surprising quickness. We pass at a single step from the natural and wholesome egotism of the young man who has his bread to win to the wide interests and generous public spirit of the good citizen. ”

“ Can I clear away some of the mists that hang round my friend, and show him as worthy of love as he was of admiration? The task is not an easy one. In most minds some one influence governs, from which all secondary impulses are found to radiate, but this pivot of character was wanting to Lord Byron. Governed at different moments by totally different passions, and impelled sometimes, as in his excess of parsimony in Italy, by springs of action never before developed in his nature, he presents the strangest contradictions and inconsistencies, a bewildering complication of qualities. ”

“ At the time when your majesty admitted me to your counsels and confided to me the direction of public affairs I may say with truth that the Huguenots divided the state with your majesty, the great families behaved as though they had no sovereign, and the governor of provinces as if they had been sovereigns themselves. Every man took his own audacity to be the measure of his merit, so that the most presumptious were considered the wisest, and proved often the most fortunate. Abroad the friendship of France was despised. At home private interests were preferred to the general advantage. ”

“ No one can be more daunted than I am by the flight of time, nor feel more keenly beforehand the griefs which ordinarily follow pleasures. Indeed, my daughter, life mingles its good and ill: when one has what one desires, one is all the nearer to losing it; when it is further from us, we dream of finding it. So we must just take things as God sends them. For my part, I would cherish the hope of seeing you without mixing in with other feelings; and look forward to holding you in my arms next month. ”

“ With no adviser or woman near her, in her panic and despair she took the fatal resolve and crossed the Solway into Elizabeth's realm, trusting to the magnanimity of the woman whom she had tried to ruin and supplant. Again her heart had deceived her. Elizabeth had no pity for a vanquished foe, and for the rest of her miserable life, well nigh a score of years, Mary Stuart was a prisoner. But in all those years she never ceased to plot and plan for the overthrow of Elizabeth and her own elevation to the Catholic throne of all Britain. ”

“ I never let myself forget the fact that I am growing old; but I must confess that I was simply astonished at what she said, because I do not yet feel any infirmity to keep me in mind of my advancing years. I think of them, however, and find that life offers us hard conditions: here have I been led, in spite of myself, to the fatal period at which one must die--old age. I see it; old age has stolen upon me; and my only desire is to go no further. I do not want to travel along that road of infirmities, pains, the loss of memory, the disfigurements to which I look forward as an outrage ”

“ I know of several princes who have lost their kingdoms and their subjects by letting their strength decay through fear of taxing them; and subjects have before now fallen into servitude to their enemies, through wishing too much liberty under their natural sovereign. The proportion between the burden and the strength of those who have to support it ought to be even religiously observed; a prince cannot be considered good if he draws more than he ought from his subjects; yet the best princes are not always those who never levy more than is necessary. ”

“ There will be no more disputes nor factions; no longer will laws be made, they will only be discovered. Education will have taken the place of war, and by means of universal suffrage there will be chosen a parliament of intellect.
In that serene and glorious age there will be no more warriors, but workers only; creators in the place of exterminators. The civilisation of action will have passed away, and that of thought will have succeeded. The masterpieces of art and of literature will be the great events. ”