William Cobbett

Please your eye and plague your heart.

Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of “speculation”; but which ought to be called Gambling.

The power which money gives is that of brute force; it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet.

You never know what you can do till you try.

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write.

The tendency of taxation is to create a class of persons who do not labor, to take from those who do labor the produce of that labor, and to give it to those who do not labor.

Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives.

It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world.

It is not the greatness of a man’s means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.

Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.

To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.

Never esteem men on account of their riches or their station. Respect goodness, find it where you may.

The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people. have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.

From a very early age I had imbibed the opinion that it was every man’s duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it.

Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted.

I defy you to agitate any fellow with a full stomach.

Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex; and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them.