George Canning Quotes

George Canning offers lofty, poetic musings that weave history and imagination.

21 quotes

1. I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.

2. I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.

3. Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir.

4. I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first.

5. So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourn, glides The Derby dilly, carrying three INSIDES.

6. And finds, with keen, discriminating sight, Black 's not so black,-nor white so very white.

7. Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe, Bold I can meet,-perhaps may turn his blow! But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save, save, oh save me from the candid friend!

8. No, here 's to the pilot that weathered the storm!

9. In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch Is offering too little and asking too much. The French are with equal advantage content, So we clap on Dutch bottoms just twenty per cent.

10. Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.

11. Needy knife-grinder! whither are ye going? Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order; Bleak blows the blast-your hat has got a hole in it. So have your breeches.

12. There is nothing I know of so sublime as a fact.

13. A steady patriot of the world alone, The friend of every country but his own.

14. Whene'er with haggard eyes I view This dungeon that I'm rotting in, I think of those companions true Who studied with me at the U- Niversity of Gottingen.

15. Active beneficence is a virtue of easier practice than forbearance after having conferred, or than thankfulness after having received a benefit. I know not, indeed, whether it be a greater and more difficult exercise of magnanimity, for the one party to act as if he had forgotten, or for the other as if he constantly remembered the obligation.

16. If hush'd the loud whirlwind that ruffled the deep, The sky if no longer dark tempests deform; When our perils are past shall our gratitude sleep? No! Here's to the pilot that weather'd the storm!

17. Intimately concerned as we are with the system of Europe, it does not follow that we are therefore called upon to mix ourselves onevery occasion, with a restless and meddling activity, in the concerns of the nations which surround us.

18. But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save me, oh, save me, from the candid friend!

19. When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?

20. Away with the cant of 'Measures not men!'-the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along.

21. Man, only - rash, refined, presumptuous man, Starts from his rank, and mars creation's plan.