Quote collection
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"The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise isgone! it isgone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness."
"Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time."
"The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue; and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it."
"I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people."
"Man is by his constitution a religious animal."
"Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise."
"They [Americans] augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze."
"We begin our public affection in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen."
"Custom reconciles us to everything."
"Man is an animal that cooks his victuals."
"Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume."
"To reach the height of our ambition is like trying to reach the rainbow; as we advance it recedes."
"Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed."
"Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic."
"The science of constructing a commonwealth or renovating it, or reforming it, is...not to be taught a priori...That which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may rise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions."
"We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about: not with a state which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which by its essence, is inimical to all other governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country."
"When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom."
"Responsibility prevents crimes."
"If we owned the property, we will be free and prosperous. If so they regain control, we will become poor"
"When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand."