England is the paradise of women, the purgatory of men, and the hell…

How poor remembrances are statues, tombs, And other monuments that men erect To princes, which remain in closèd rooms Where but a few behold them, in respect Of Books, that to the universal eye Show how they lived; the other where they lie!

Since honour from the honourer proceeds, How well do they deserve that memorize And leave in Books, for all posterities The names of worthies and their virtuous deeds.

In this country … men seem to live for action as long as they can and sink into apathy when they retire.

The spider-men came first, and presented her Majesty with a table full of mathematical points, lines and figures of all sorts of squares, circles, triangles, and the like; which the Empress, notwithstanding that she had a very ready wit, …

I am the greatest landowner in the world.

[T]he past was supreme; the priest who cherished it lived in a realm of shadows, and for the contemporary world he had no vital meaning. Likewise in Babylon the same retrospective spirit was now the dominant characteristic of the reviving …