“Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them.”

“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.”

“Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling.”

“My experience teaches me, Lady Dedlock, that most of the people I know would do far better to leave marriage alone. It is at the bottom of three fourths of their troubles.”

“You see us poor Englishmen searching hard for the solution of a problem when there isn't one. You may think that the Irish want certain definite reforms, and that they will be happy and contented the day they get them; but not at all. What amuses them is discussion itself, plotting in theory. They play with the idea of Home Rule; if we gave it them, the game would be finished and they would invent another, probably a more dangerous one.”

“It was in the rule book. They gave you three warnings. The fourth time you fell below four miles an hour you were…well, you were out of the Walk. But if you had three warnings and could manage to walk for three hours, you were back in the sun again.”

“Delirium, dream, death—Three-D. What was the fourth?”

“Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.”

“The Rule of Three, or Golden Rule of Arithmeticall whole Numbers. Be the three termes given 2 3 4. …To finde their fourth proporcionall Terme: that is to say, in such Reason to the third terme 4, as the second terme 3, is to the first terme 2 [Modern notation: \frac{x}{4} = \frac{3}{2}]. …Multiply the second terme 3, by the third terme 4, & giveth the product 12: which dividing by the first terme 2, giveth the Quotient 6: I say that 6 is the fourth proportional terme required.”

“No, I'm a man with a rule. People leave me alone, I leave them alone. If they don't, I don't.”