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