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date: 28 March 2025

Lord Salisbury (3rd Marquess of Salisbury) 1830–1903
British Conservative statesman; Prime Minister 1855–6, 1886–92, 1895–1902 

  1. Too clever by half.
    of Disraeli's amendment on Disestablishment
    speech, House of Commons, 30 March 1868; see also Salisbury
  2. No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
    letter to Lord Lytton, 15 June 1877; in Lady Gwendolen Cecil Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (1921–32) vol. 2
  3. One of the nuisances of the ballot is that when the oracle has spoken you never know what it means.
    after the Renfrew by-election of October 1877; Andrew Roberts Salisbury: Victorian Titan (1999); see Clinton
  4. We are part of the community of Europe and we must do our duty as such.
    speech at Caernarvon, 10 April 1888
  5. Horny-handed sons of toil.
    in Quarterly Review October 1873; later popularized in the US by Denis Kearney (1847–1907); see Lowell
  6. By office boys for office boys.
    of the Daily Mail
    H. Hamilton Fyfe Northcliffe, an Intimate Biography (1930) ch. 4