Sir George Savile, 8th Baronet Quotes

The best Qualification of a Prophet is to have a good Memory.

Our virtues and vices couple with one another, and get children that resemble both their parents.

Men seldom understand any laws but those they feel.

The law hath so many contradictions and varyings from itself, that the law may not improperly be called a law-breaker. It is become too changeable a thing to be defined: it is made little less a Mystery than the Gospel. The clergy and the lawyers, like the Freemasons, may be supposed to take an oath not to tell the secret.

Weak men are the worse for the good sense they read in books because it furnisheth them only with more matter to mistake.

There is reason to think the most celebrated philosophers would have been bunglers at business; but the reason is because they despised it.

No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool.

Malice is of a low stature, but it hath very long arms.

He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things.

Some men's memory is like a box where a man should mingle his jewels with his old shoes.

A wise man will keep his Suspicions muzzled, but he will keep them awake.

There is hardly any man so strict as not to vary a little from truth when he is to make an excuse.

You should live in the world so as it may hang about you like a loose garment.

When the People contend for their Liberty, they seldom get anything by their Victory but new masters. Power is so apt to be insolent and Liberty to be saucy, that they are very seldom upon good Terms.

Most men make little use of their speech than to give evidence against their own understanding.

Men in business are in as much danger from those at work under them as from those that work against them.

When by habit a man cometh to have a bargaining soul, its wings are cut, so that it can never soar. It bindeth reason an apprentice to gain, and instead of a director, maketh it a drudge.

Men that cannot entertain themselves want somebody, though they care for nobody.

A princely mind will undo a private family.

Could we know what men are most apt to remember, we might know what they are most apt to do.

He who thinks his place below him, will certainly be below his place.