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