Lord Melbourne Quotations

Nobody ever did anything very foolish except from some strong principle.

It wounds a man less to confess that he has failed in any pursuit through idleness, neglect, the love of pleasure, etc., etc., which are his own faults, than through incapacity and unfitness, which are the faults of his nature.

My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.

It is not much matter which we say, but mind, we must all say the same.

Things are coming to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade private life.

A doctrinaire is a fool but an honest man.

That is no use at all. What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.

Wealth is so much the greatest good that Fortune has to bestow that in the Latin and English languages it has usurped her name.

God help the Minister that meddles with art!

If it was not absolutely necessary, it was the foolishest thing ever done.

You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule.

Your friends praise your abilities to the skies, submit to you in argument, and seem to have the greatest deference for you; but, though they may ask it, you never find them following your advice upon their own affairs; nor allowing you to manage your own, without thinking that you should follow theirs. Thus, in fact, they all think themselves wiser than you, whatever they may say.