C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Thomas Jefferson
All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
And for the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about “a public debt being a public blessing,” that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the ailment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture.
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,—entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;***freedom of religion; freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus; and trials by juries impartially selected,—these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.
Let the farmer forevermore be honored in his calling; for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.
Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
Never spend your money before you have it.
Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap.
Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
We seldom repent having eaten too little.
Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
How much pain the evils have cost us that have never happened!
Take things always by the smooth handle.
When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.
No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any.
Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of His creatures in this world; but that He has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I have steadfastly believed.
The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.
The habit of using ardent spirits, by men in office, has occasioned more injury to the public and more trouble to me, than all other causes. And were I to commence my administration again, the first question I would ask, respecting a candidate for office would be, “Does he use ardent spirits?”
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.