Men Quotes - Page 1146

Life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

Movement isn't progress.

I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author

The further the departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government of the ingredient of republicanism.

Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.

There is... an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency.

The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social being

Most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one's country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government, and acts against the oppressions of the government. The latter are virtues, yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former. Real treasons are rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries.

A covenant not to defend myself from force by force is always void. For ... no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself. For the right men have by Nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no Covenant be relinquished. ... [The right] to defend ourselves [is the] summe of the Right of Nature.

Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad.

Judge not a man by his clothes, but by his wife's clothes.

It appears first, that liberty is a natural, and government an adventitious right, because all men were originally free.

For every one hundred men who can stand adversity there is only one who can withstand prosperity.

There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him.

Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once.

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.

I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Archilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me.

There is no such way to attain to greater measures of grace, as for a man to live up to that little grace he has.

Whatever sin the heart of man is most prone to, that the devil will help forward.

Sin in a wicked man is like poison in a serpent; it is in its natural place.

The natural man cannot but resist the Lord's offering to help him; yet that resistance is infallibly overcome in the elect, by converting grace.