John Morley (1838 – 1923)
British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor.
Excess of severity is not the path to order. On the contrary, it is the path to the bomb.
The most frightful idea that has ever corroded human nature—the idea of eternal punishment.
In my creed, waste of public money is like the sin against the Holy Ghost.
Evolution is not a force but a process; not a cause but a law.
Literature—the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.
There are some books which cannot be adequately reviewed for twenty or thirty years after they come out.
...there is nothing that the most prominent men in the Liberal party more earnestly desire than that labour representation, direct labour representation, shall be as large as possible...It is sometimes said to me, "Oh! but you are against State intervention in matters of great social reform". At this time of the day it would be absurd for any man who has mastered all the Mining Regulations Acts, the Factories Acts, the great mass of regulation which affects trade; it would be absurd for any man to stand on a platform and say he was entirely against State intervention. I, for my part, have never taken that position...My own belief is that in the matters of hours and of wages for adult male labour the interference would be a bad and mischievous thing...that in such matters, for example, as housing of the poor and so forth, the proper machinery through which to carry out these operations is municipal and not Parliamentary.
The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.