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