Once upon his return from examining a school taught by religious, he was observed to be preoccupied, and was asked the reason.
"I was thinking," he said, "that few indeed are to be trusted with the credulity of childhood."
Of a noted atheist who was very charitable, he remarked: "G—— gives alms for the hatred of God."
After leaving Oxford his remarks seldom strayed beyond the sphere of his new duties. When they did, they were apt to be rarely illuminating. He said of France, for instance: "Four words give us her genius and her history—'Often conquered, never ashamed.'"
He used to declare that, in striking a balance between a man's happiness and unhappiness, time was not to be taken into account at all, because men live all their lives every day of their lives.