. . . it a great error to waste young gentlemen's years so long in learning Latin by so tedious a grammar.

One of the strangest catastrophes that is in any history. A great king, with strong armies and mighty fleets, a great treasure and powerful allies, fell all at once, and his whole strength, like a spider's web, was . . . irrecoverably broken at a touch.

. . . was apt to suffer things to run on till there was a great heap of papers laid before him, so then he signed them a little too precipitately.

The Duke of Buckingham gave me once a short but severe character of the two brothers. It was the more severe, because it was true: the King (he said) could see things if he would, and the Duke would see things if he could.

. . . for the most part the worst instructed, and the least knowing of any of their rank, I ever went amongst.

He [Halifax] had said that he had known many kicked downstairs, but he never knew any kicked upstairs before.