
“There you [Sir Robert Peel] sit, doing penance for the disingenuousness of years.”
Speech in the House of Commons (14 April 1845)
Source: Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Vol. 2 (1922), p. 13
Context: The British ambassador was Sir Robert Morier. He too was a strong character, though lacking apparently in some of General [der Infanterie] von Schweinitz's more kindly qualities. He was big, roughish, and at times so brusque that he might almost be called brutal. When bullying was needed it was generally understood that he could do it con amore.
“There you [Sir Robert Peel] sit, doing penance for the disingenuousness of years.”
Speech in the House of Commons (14 April 1845)
“I cannot become another Sir Robert Peel in my Party.”
Remark to David Lloyd George (October 1910) rejecting his proposals for a coalition government, quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 54
Leader of the Opposition
“Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.”
Mrs Cheveley, Act I
Usually quoted as: No man is rich enough to buy back his own past.
Source: An Ideal Husband (1895)
Referring to the National Party's problems with internal discipline and Robert Muldoon's reluctance to relinquish power.
Source: Gliding on the Lino: The Wit of David Lange, compiled by David Barber, 1987.
As quoted in an interview with The Guardian (17 August 2011) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/17/mikhail-gorbachev-on-boris-yeltsin
2000s
As quoted in Socialism and Superior Brains: The Political Thought of Bernard Shaw by Gareth Griffith (1993). Originally from Bernard Shaw, The News Chronicle, “The Blackshirt Challenge,” (Jan. 1934)
1930s
Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945
“Ambassadors are the eye and ear of states.”
Gli ambasciadori sono l'occhio e l'orecchio degli stati.
Storia d' Italia (1537-1540)
“Ambassadors are the eyes and ears of States.”
Gli Ambasciadori sono gli occhi e gli orecchi de gli stati.
CCLXXVI.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 305.
Concetti Politici (1578)
Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte insults US envoy with homophobic slur https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/10/philippines-leader-calls-us-ambassador-gay-son-of-a-whore-prompting-summons, The Guardian (10 August 2016)