"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America.

Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation.

Greater mischief happens often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.

No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions; on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor.