The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
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The great men among the ancients understood very well how to reconcile manual labour with affairs of state, and thought it no lessening to their dignity to make the one the recreation to the other. That indeed which seems most generally to have employed and diverted their spare hours, was agriculture. Gideon among the Jews was taken from threshing, as well as Cincinnatus amongst the Romans from the plough, to command the armies of their countries...and, as I remember, Cyrus thought gardening so little beneath the dignity and grandeur of a throne, that he showed Xenophon a large field of fruit trees all of his own planting . . . Delving, planting, inoculating, or any the like profitable employments would be no less a diversion than any of the idle sports in fashion, if men could be brought to delight in them.
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Curiosity in children, is but an appetite for knowledge. One great reason why children abandon themselves wholly to silly pursuits and trifle away their time insipidly is, because they find their curiosity balked, and their inquiries neglected.
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Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.
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Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.
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Had the King of Spain employed the hands of his people, and his Spanish iron so, he had brought to light but little of that treasure that lay so long hid in the dark entrails of America.
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Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, somethimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbe them.
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Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu : Nothing is in the understanding, which was not first perceived by some of the senses.
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There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.
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Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.
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All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.
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An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards.
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I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.
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I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar professions and pursuits.
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Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.
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Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.
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A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.
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I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts
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Practice conquers the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule.
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A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.
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A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world
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New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
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Where there is no property there is no injustice.
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We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
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If all political power be derived only from Adam, and be to descend only to his successive heirs, by the ordinance of God and divine instituti...
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I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
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All wealth is the product of labor.
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The discipline of desire is the background of character.
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Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.
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This tendency [to cruelty] should be watched in them [children], and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing other animals will, by degrees, harden their hearts even towards men.... And they, who delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind. Children should from the beginning be brought up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting living beings.... And indeed, I think people from their cradles should be tender to all sensible creatures.... All the entertainment and talk of History is of nothing but fighting and killing; and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerors, who, for the most part, are but the great butchers of mankind, further mislead youth.
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