“The Tory, of course, is shocked by my Whiggism; the Whigs are rather displeased at my candour in conceding that they have sometimes been wrong, and the Tories right.”

Wearing the criticism of both sides as proof of his fairness as a biographer · Preface to the fifth edition of his Life of Sheridan

• Truth

“One of the noblest minded as well as the most warm hearted of all God's creatures was born under that lowly roof.”

A son's tribute to the mother who shaped his ambitions · Remembered remark, revisiting his mother's Wexford birthplace in 1838

• Love
• Memory

“Patience must first explore the depths where the pearl lies hid, before Genius boldly dives and brings it up full into light.”

Reflecting on the slow groundwork that true creative brilliance depends upon · Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1825)

• Art
• Truth