Lovers of Lordships

Some gan to gape for greedy governance,
And match themselves with mighty potentates
Lovers of lordships, and troublers of States.

-John Milton

Better in a Fair Than in a Wood Alone

If the mind be possessed with any lust or passion, a man had better be in a fair than in a wood alone. They may, like petty thieves, cheat us perhaps, and pick our pockets in the midst of company; but like robbers they use to strip and bind, or murder us when they catch us alone.

-Abraham Cowley

Natural Scissors

As scissors were made to cut up cloth, so were natural rights invented to cut up law, and legal rights.

- Jeremy Bentham

The Conceit of Ignorance

If a man is to pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that he already knows.

-Epictetus

Royalty

Royalty is a good burial shroud.

-Procopius

Virtue

Virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.

-Edmund Burke

Splendid in Ashes

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.

-Sir Thomas Browne

Arbitrary Power

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

-George Washington

Political Penalty

One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors.

-Plato

The Parson's Preaching

In preaching, they do by men as writers of romances do by their chief knights, bring them into many dangers, but still fetch them off; so they put men in fear of Hell, but at last bring them to Heaven.

- John Seldon

Death and Wisdom

It is death that puts into man all the wisdom of the world without speaking a word. Death, which hateth and destroyeth man, is believed; God, which hath made him and loves him is always deferred.

-Sir Walter Raleigh

Good Actions

The great majority of good actions are intended not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals, of which the good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the most virtuous man need not on these occasions travel beyond the particular persons concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself that in benefiting them he is not violating the rights, that is, the legitimate and authorized expectations, of anyone else.

- John Stuart Mill

A Kingly Thing

It is a kingly thing to do well... and to be evil spoken of.

- Antisthenes

Stubborn Believers

Those who feel predestined to see but not believe will find all believers too noisy and obtrusive: they fend him off.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Vicious Luxury

By banishing vicious luxury, without curing sloth and indifference to others, you only diminish industry in the state, and add nothing to men's charity or their generosity.

-David Hume

Fear and Horror

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; but to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination.

-John Donne

The Objects of Passion

What are the objects of... Passion?
Youth, beauty, and clean linen.
The reason?
The two first are fashionable in Nature, and the third at court.

- George Farquhar

Insolence

Insolence breeds the tyrant, insolence
if it is glutted with a surfeit, unseasonable, unprofitable,
climbs to the roof-top and plunges
sheer down to the ruin that must be,
and there its feet are no service.

-Sophocles

You are What You Think

The human mind is trained by the knowledge imparted to it and the direction given to its ideas. Only what is great can make it great; the little can only make it little.

- Carl von Clausewitz

The Side Door

Every person's feelings have a front-door and a side-door by which they may be entered. The front-door is in the street. Some keep it always open; some keep it latched; some, locked, some, bolted, - with a chain that will let you peep in, but not get in; and some nail it up, so that nothing can pass its threshold. This front door leads into a passage which opens into an ante-room and this into the interior apartments. The side-door opens at once to the sacred chambers.

There is almost always at least one key to this side-door. This is carried for years hidden in a mother's bosom. Fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends, often, but by no means so universally have duplicates of it. The wedding-ring conveys a right to one; alas if none is given with it.

-Oliver Wendel Holmes

No Evil in the Inevitable

For the stone which has been thrown up it is no evil to come down, nor indeed any good to have been carried up.

- Marcus Aurelius

A Fool for Company

When he talked to me as a philosopher of his contempt of the world, I asked him, what he meant by getting so many new titles, which I call'd the hanging himself about with bells and tinsel. He had no other excuse for it, but this, that, since the world were such fools as to value those matters, a man must be a fool for company.

-Gilbert Burnet on the Marquess of Halifax

Secrecy and Conspiracy

Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never be the system of regular government.

-Jeremy Bentham

Nature

If Nature be to be imitated, then there is a rule for imitating Nature rightly: otherwise there may be an end, and no means of conducting to it.

-John Dryden

Hell and Texas

If I owned Hell and Texas, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.

- General Phillip Henry Sheridan

Mendacity

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Death is one way out. Liquor is another.

-Tennessee Williams

Lawyers

Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.

-Jeremy Bentham

No Miracles

You have to remember that, in economic policies, there are no miracles.

-Ludwig von Mises

Fashion

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

-Oscar Wilde

Astrology

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often surfeits of our own behavior), we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we are villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and that we are evil in, and by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion by whore master man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!

-Shakespeare, King Lear

The Middle

There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos.

-Jim Hightower

Labor

Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.

-U.S. Grant

Women

When Women consider their own Beauties, they are all alike unreasonable in their demands; for they expect their Lovers should like them as long as they like themselves.

- John Gay

A Pendant

He treads in a rule, and one hand scans verses, and the other holds his sceptre. He dare not think a thought, that the nominative case governs not the verb; and he never had meaning in his life, for he travelled only for words. His ambition is criticism, and his example Tully. He values phrases, and elects them by sound, and the eight parts of speech are his servants. To be brief, he is the heteroclite for he wants the plural number, having only the single quality of words.

- Sir Thomas Overbury

Ambition Frustrated

The power of ambition which posseth the minds of men is such as rarely or never sufficeth them to rest: the reason therof is that Nature hath framed in them a certain disposition to desire all things but not the power to obtain them; so as our desires being greater than our power, thereof followeth discontent and evil satisfaction.

-Sir Walter Raliegh

Mind the Courtiers

When you censure the Age,
Be cautious and sage.
lest the Courtiers offended should be:
If you mention Vice or Bribe,
'Tis so pat to all the Tribe;
Each crys - That was levelled at me.

- John Gay

The Fundamentalist Mind

To tolerate more than [non-essentials] is not to deale indifferently with God: he that doth it, takes the scepter out of his hands and bid him stand by. Who hath to doe to institute religion but God? The power of all religion and ordinances, lies in their purity; their purity in their simplicity; then are mixtures pernicious.

- Nathaniel Ward

Confidence

It never troubles a wolf how many sheep there be.

-Virgil

Truth is a Labor

For questionlesse in knowledge there is no slender difficulty, and truth, which wise men say doth lye in a well, is not recoverable but by exantlation.

- Sir Thomas Browne

The Nearest Link

Whatever is, is right. Though purblind man
Sees but a part o' the chain, the nearest link:
His eyes not carrying to the equal beam,
That poises all above.

-Dryden

Mind Your Attention

It is not necessary to restrict yourself to lofty subjects or philosophy all the time, but be aware that the common babbling that passes for worthwhile discussion has a corrosive affect on your higher purpose. When we blather about trivial things, we ourselves become trivial, for our attention gets taken up with trivialities. You become what you give your attention to.

-Epictetus

Dangerous Men of Zeal

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment of men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

-Justice Louis Brandeis

The Delicate Dignity of Congress

The representatives of the people, in a popular assembly, seem sometimes to fancy that they are the people themselves; and betray strong symptoms of impatience and disgust at the least sign of opposition from any other quarter: as if the exercise of its rights by either the executive or the judiciary were a breach of their privilege and an outrage to their dignity.

-Alexander Hamilton

Big Enough

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

-Barry Goldwater

An Army of Sheep

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.

-Alexander the Great

Matters of Mind and Spirit

Those who want government to regulate matters of mind and spirit are like men so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

-Harry Truman

Love and Envy

There be none of the affections which have been noted to fascinate or bewitch, but love and envy. They both have vehement wishes; they frame themselves readily into imagination and suggestions; and they come easily into the eye, especially upon the presence of objects; which are the points that conduce to fascination, if any such thing there be.

-Francis Bacon

The Germanic Languages

Mastery of the art and spirit of the Germanic languages enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.

-Mark Twain

You Cannot Limit the Unlimited

How can there be a definite limit to the supreme power if an indefinite happiness, left to its judgement, is to be its aim? Are the princes to be the fathers of the people, however great be the danger that they will also become its despots?

- G.H. von Berg

Poverty

The thing about poverty is not how little you have: that is not the worst part. The worst part about poverty is living in fear that you will lose what little you have.

-Unknown.

You First

Neither in writing nor in reading wilt thou be able to lay down rules for others before thou shalt have first learned to obey rules thyself. Much more so is this in life.

-Marcus Aurelius

Adding to the Burden

He who relies upon state protection must pay for it by limitations of liberty; by every new demand which he makes on the state, he increases its function and the burden of it on himself. Weary of protecting himself, he begs the state to take care of him; the state, however, only orders him to take care of himself in co-operation with others under its supervision, and it takes its toll from him in money, time, and services for giving him this good advice and this wholesome coercion.

-William Graham Sumner

A Fine Gentleman

[H]e is judicial only in tailors and barbers, but his opinion is ever ready and ever idle. If you will know more of his acts, the broker's shop is the witness of his valor, where lies wounded, dead, rent, and out of fashion, many a spruce suit, overthrown by his fantasticness.

-Sir Thomas Overbury

Dogs

Dogs lives are too short. Their only fault really.

-unknown

Petrification

Petrification is of two sorts. There is petrifaction of the understanding; and also the sense of shame. This happens when a man obstinately refuses to acknowledge plain truths, and persists in maintaining what is self-contradictory. Most of us dread mortification of the body, and would spare no pains to escape anything of that kind. But of mortification of the soul we are utterly heedless. With regard, indeed to the soul, if a man is in such a state as to be incapable of following or understanding anything, I grant you we do think him in a bad way. But mortification of the sense of shame and modesty we go so far as to dub strength of mind!

-Epictetus

Promises of the Moon

The promises made by the Moon are broken by the Sun.

-Anonymous

The Old and the Young

They say... that the old man has nothing... to hope for. Yet he is in better case than the young man, since what the latter merely hopes for, the former has already attained; the one wishes to live long, the other has lived long.

-Cicero

Ale, Man, Ale's the Stuff

Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's way to man
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think

-A.E. Housman

The Cross of Fortune

The more we amplify our need and possession, the more we engage our selves to the crosses of fortune and adversity.

-Montaigne

What Faults?

No weakness of the human mind has more frequently occured animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.

-Samuel Johnson

Costumes of Invention

The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. Society is a wave. The wave moves onward but the water of which it is composed does not.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

On Flatterers

Take care not to be made a fool by flatterers, for even the wisest men are abused by these.

Know therefore that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors; for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing, but so shadow and paint all thy vices and follies, as thou shalt never, by their will, discern evil from good or vice from virtue.

- Sir Walter Raleigh

Hedging Your Bets

It is safer that a wicked man should never be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

-Livy

A Good Excuse Is Worse Than None

There are some people who are very resourceful
At being remorseful
And who apparently feel that the best way to make friends
Is to do something terrible and then make amends.

And they are always sure that today you don't mind their
inflicting on you any sorrow,
Because they'll give you so much pleasure when they
smilingly apologize tomorrow.

But I myself would rather have a rude word from
someone who has done me no harm
Than a graceful letter from the King of England
saying he's sorry he broke my arm.

-Ogden Nash

The Worth of Praise

He who does not know what the world is, does not know where he is. And he who knows not for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is. But he who has failed in any one of these things could not even say for what purpose he exists himself. What then dost thou think of him who seeks praise of those who applaud, of men who know not either where they are or who they are?

-Marcus Aurelius

Rallying the Masses

Suppose a historical situation has arisen (a war, an agrarian crises, etc.) in which the proletariat, constituting a minority of the population, has an opportunity to rally the masses; why should it not take power then? Why should the proletariat not take advantage of a favorable international and internal situation to pierce the front of capitalism and hasten the general denouement?

- Joseph Stalin (Not Rahm Emanuel).

A Blunt Man

Is one whose wit is better pointed than his behavior, and that coarse and unpolished, not out of ignorance so much as humor. He is the great enemy to the fine gentleman, and these things of compliment, and hates ceremony and conversation, as the Puritan in religion. He distinguishes not betwixt fair and double dealing, and suspects all smoothness for the dress of knavery. He starts at the encounter of a salutation as an assault, and beseeches you in choler to forbear your courtesy. He loves not anything in discourse that comes before the purpose, and is always suspicious of a preface. Himself falls rudely still on his matter without any circumstance, except he use an old proverb for an introduction.

- John Earle

On Marriage

Dost thou know what marriage is? 'Tis the curing of love the dearest way, or waking a losing gamester out of a winning dream, and after a long expectation of a strange banquet, a presentation of a homeley meal.

-Sir John Suckling

On Trade

To export things things of necessity and bring in foreign needless toys, makes a rich merchant, and a poor kingdom.

-Thomas Fuller

Rage and Frenzy

Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.

-Edmund Burke

More than Men

For certainly as some men have sinned, in the principals of humanity, and must answer for not being men, others have offended if they be not more.

-Sir Thomas Browne

Reading Books

A few Books well studied, and thoroughly digested, nourish the understanding more than hundreds but gargled in the mouth.

-Francis Osborn

The Fallacy of Socialism

The great fallacy of socialist schemes is that they break off the social reaction. A man is to have something simply because he is a man - that is, simply because he is here. He is not called upon to make any return for it, except to stay. On the other hand, the tax-payer, who has provided all there is, is not on that account to be entitled to recompense of any kind. He has incurred a new liability, viz., to do the next thing which is demanded of him.

- William Graham Sumner

The Astronomer and the Philosopher

Two Chinamen traveling in Europe went to the theater for the first time. One of them did nothing but study the machinery, and he succeeded in finding out how it worked. The other tried to get at the meaning of the piece in spite of his ignorance of the language. Here you have the difference between the Astronomer and the Philosopher.

- Schopenhauer

A Matter of Worth

Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.

- Thomas Paine

Work and Will

When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
Ah! who shall dare search through what sad maze
Thenceforth with incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of Death?

-Christina Rossetti

Fame

As fame hath often been dangerous to the living, so it is to the dead of no use at all.

- Sir Walter Raleigh

Advertising Sincerity

How unsound and insincere is he who says, I have determined to deal with thee in a fair way- what are they doing? There is no occasion to give this notice. It will soon show itself by acts. The voice ought to be plainly written on the forehead.

- Marcus Aurelius

An Error of Legislators

What leads legislators into... error is confounding sins and crimes together - making no difference between moral evil and state rebellion: not considering that a man might be infected with moral evil, and yet be guilty of no crime punishable by law.

- Jack Nips

Pleasure

Wits, just like fools, at war about a name,
Have full as oft no meaning, or the same.
Self-love and reason to one end aspire,
Pain their aversion, and pleasure their desire;
But greedy that, its object would devour,
This taste the honey, and not wound the flower:
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

-Alexander Pope

Vanity

There are those among mankind, who can enjoy no relish of their being, except the world is made acquainted with all that relates to them, and think everything lost that passes unobserved.

-Sir Richard Steele

Spite

Since we cannot attain to greatness, let's have our revenge by railing against it.

-Sieur de Montaigne

On Force

Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.

- John Milton, Paradise Lost

Orderly Confusion

I confess I can look for nothing 'other,' I can say no other than what a foolish Book expresseth, of one that having consulted everything, could hold to nothing; neither Fifth-Monarchy, Presbytery, nor Independency; nothing but at length concludes, He is for nothing but an "orderly confusion!" And for men that have wonderfully lost their consciences and their wits, - I speak of men going about who cannot tell what they would have, yet are willing to kindle coals to disturb others!

- Oliver Cromwell, Speech XVII

The Wisdom of Silence

Wisemen say nothing in dangerous times. The Lyon you knowe call'd the sheep to aske her if his breath smelt; shee said Yes: hee bitt off her head for a foole. He call'd the Wolfe & asked him; hee said Noe; he tore him in pieces for a flatterer. At last hee called the fox, and asked him: why, he had gott a cold and could not smell.

-John Seldon

Our Neighbor's Shame

"There is a lust in man no charm can tame,
Of loudly publishing his neighbor's shame."

Hence

"On eagle's wings immortal scandals fly,
While virtuous actions are but born and die."

-Dryden

Morality and Propriety

The nature of the difference between morality and propriety can be more easily felt than expressed. For whatever propriety may be, it is manifested only when there is a pre-existing moral rectitude.

-Cicero

Virtue

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,-as invalids and the insane pay high board. Their virtues are penances.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

John the Scot

While dinning one evening, Jon the Scot was seated across the table from King Charles the Bald. In a moment of merriment, the king asked Jon, "what is the difference between a sot and a Scot?"

"Only the table" replied Jon.

- An anecdote from William of Malmesbury, The Bishops of England.

Universal Idiocy

There is no difficulty in proving any ethical standard whatever to work ill, if we suppose universal idiocy to be conjoined with it.

- John Stuart Mill

A Youth

When a youth was giving himself airs in the Theatre and saying, "I am wise, for I have have conversed with many wise men," Epictetus replied, "I too have conversed with many rich men, yet I am not rich!"

- Marcus Aurelius

Running an Army

An army cannot be run according to the rules of etiquette.

-Sun Tzu

Limits of Doctrine

There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.

-Ben Jonson

Lost Innocence

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

-Thomas Paine

Our Political Climate

Our Government is like our Climate, there are Winds which are sometimes loud and unquiet, and yet with all the Trouble they give us, we owe great part of our Health unto them, they clear the Air, which else would be like a standing Pool, and in stead of refreshment would be a disease unto us.

-George Savile, Marquess of Halifax

Tryanny is Tyranny

It is in vaine for our Members of Parliament to think that we will justifie or tollerate the same among them, which we would not indure in the King, to pluck off the Garments of Royalty from oppression and tyranny, to dresse up the same in Parliament Robes: No, no, that was ever and is farre from our hearts, and wee shall justifie or allow the same no more in the one than the other, for it is unequall in both, and in itself resistable wherever it is found...

-Thomas Overton

Sage Doubt

There are certain emergencies when your profound legislators and sage deliberative councils are mightily in the way of a nation, and when an ounce of hair-brained decision is worth a pound of sage doubt and cautious discussion.

-Washington Irving

Absalon

How happy had he been, if Destiny
Had higher placed his birth or not so high!
His kingly virtues might have claimed a throne
And blessed all nations but his own.

-John Dryden

On Retirement

O blest retirement, friend to life's decline,
Retreats from care, that never must be mine,
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these,
A youth of labor with an age of ease.

- Oliver Goldsmith

The Obscurity of Morals

The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject. Men upon too many occasions do not give their own understanding fair play; but yielding to some untoward bias they entangle themselves in words and confound themselves in subtleties.

- Alexander Hamilton

Ignorance

Ignorance is an ill steward to provide for either soul or body.

-Owen Feltham

Desperate Fools

Once upon a time, La Mancha's Knight, they say,
A certain bard encount'ring on the way,
Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,
A e'er could Dennis of the Grecian stage;
Concluding all were desperate sots and fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.

- Pope

On Simplicity of Government

I draw my idea of the form of government from a principal in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered.

-Thomas Paine

Coercion

Wherever one man, or body of men can erect and maintain a coercive tribunal in favor of their own opinions, and in opposition to that of those who differ from them, there is the end of all free inquiry: and the right of private judgement no longer exists.


- Joel Barlow

The Invincibly Dull

All the whetting in the world can never set a rasours edge on that which hath no steel in it.

- Thomas Fuller

Of Studies

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; writing an exact man; and therefore, if a man write little, he need have a great memory; if he confer little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not.

-Francis Bacon

Man's Divinity

To seek our Divinity meerly in Books and Writings is to seek the living among the dead.

- John Smith

The Fly

God in his wisdom made the fly,
And then forgot to tell us why.

-Ogden Nash

Election Day

The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
Today, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
Today, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!

-John Greenleaf Whittier

Sentiment

All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact and are not always conformable to that standard. A thousand different sentiments, excited by the same object, are all right; Because no sentiment represents what is really in the object.

- David Hume

The Sensual and the Dark

The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game they burst their manacles and wear the name of Freedom, graven on heavier chain!

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Doctor, the Lawyer, and the Theologian

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind, the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

- Schopenhauer

Sloth

Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while used the key is always bright.

- Benjamin Franklin

Inconvenience

When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

The Puritan

A Puritan is a diseased piece of Apocrypha; bind him to the Bible, and he corrupts the whole text; ignorance and fat feed are his founders; his nurses railing, rabies, and round breeches; his life is but a borrowed blast of wind; for between two religions, as between two doors, he is ever whistling; for willingly his faith allows no father; only thus his pedigree is found.

- Sir Thomas Overbury

Honor of a Nation

Can there be in our age any peace that is not honorable, any war that is not dishonorable? The true honor of a nation is conspicuous only in deeds of justice and beneficence, securing and advancing human happiness.

- Charles Sumner

Opinion

Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.

-John Milton

On a Tavern.

To give you the total reckoning of it; it is the busy man's recreation, the idle man's business, the melancholy man's sanctuary, the stranger's welcome, the inns-a-court man's entertainment, the scholar's kindness, and the citizen's courtesy. It is the study of sparkling wits, and a cup of sherry their book.

- John Earle

Pomp and Power

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
All that beauty e'er gave
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

-Thomas Gray

Tradition

When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us; nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer.

- Edmund Burke

Undue Haste

There are a great many people who really believe in answering letters the day they are received, just as there are people who go to the movies at 9 o'clock in the morning; but these people are stunted and queer.

It is a great mistake. Such crass and breathless promptness takes away a great deal of the pleasure of correspondence.

- Christopher Morley

Character

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza - read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Fool

As long as the evil deed does not bear fruit, the fool thinks it is like honey; but when it ripens, then the fool suffers grief.

- The Dhammapada

Greed

The covetous man defrauds not only other men, but his own genius: he cheats himself for money.

-Abraham Cowley

Patriotism

The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice-always has been.

-Mark Twain

Accused

The form of a charge runs thus: I accuse in the name of all the Commons of England. How then can any man be as a witness, when everyman is made the accuser?

-John Seldon

Rhyme nor Reason

I was promis'd on a time.
To have reason for my rhyme:
From that time unto this season,
I receiv'd not rhyme nor reason.

-Edmund Spenser

Pride

Of all the curses which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgement, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules
Is Pride, the never failing vice of fools.

-Pope

Language

Language most shows a man: Speak that I might see thee. No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech. Nay, it is likened to a man; and as we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of it.

-Ben Johnson

Time

Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.

-Marcus Aurelius

Intellect

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference in men.

-Pascal

Fancy

It is the most boundless and restless faculty of the soul: for whilst the understanding and the will are kept as it were in libera custodia to their objects... the fancy is free from all engagements; it digs without a spade, sails without ship, flies without wings, builds without charges, fights without bloodshed, in a moment striding from the centre to the circumference of the world by a kind of omnipotency creating and annihilating things in an instant.

-Thomas Fuller

Body and Soul

At feasts, remember that you are entertaining two guests, body and soul. What you give to the body, you presently lose; what you give to the soul, you keep forever.

-Epictetus

The Importance of Definitions

A man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he useth stands for, and place it accordingly, or else he will find himself entangled in words as a bird in lime twigs - the more he struggles, the more enlimed.

-Thomas Hobbes

Marriage

Marriage is a desperate thing. The frogs in Aesop were extreme wise; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again.

- John Seldon

Ambition and Glory

If we seek a reason of the succession and continuance of this boundless ambition in mortal men we may add...that the kings and princes of the world have always laid before them the actions but not the ends of those great ones which preceded them. They are always transported with the glory of the one, but they never mind the misery of the other till they find the experience in themselves. They neglect the advice of God, while they enjoy life, or hope; but they follow the counsel of Death upon his first approach.

-Sir Walter Raleigh