The superior gratification derived from the use and contemplation of costly and supposedly beautiful products is, commonly, in great measure a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.

Hope is an expensive commodity. It makes better sense to be prepared.

Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, he began at the moment that it broke out, believing that it would be a great war, and more memorable than any that had preceded it.

It is useless to attack men who could not be controlled even if conquered, while failure would leave us in an even worse position.

In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants and so proves a rough master that brings most men's characters to a level with their fortunes

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.

It is the habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire