Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

"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.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.

I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

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