Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous.
Simple people, people who don't exist, prefer things which don't exist, simple things.
"Good" and "bad" are simple things. You bomb me = "bad." I bomb you = "good." Simple people (who, incidentally, run this socalled world)know this (they know everything)whereas complex people, people who feel something, are very, very ignorant and really don't know anything.
Shoot me in the chest.
Anyone who's had a tattoo knows once you get your first one, as you're walking out the door, you're planning the next.
I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.
Gentlemen, the Tory party, unless it is a national party, is nothing.
Teach us that wealth is not elegance; that profusion is not magnificence; and that splendour is not beauty. Teach us that taste is a talisman which can do greater wonders than the millions of the loanmonger. Teach us that to vie is not to rival, and to imitate not to invent. Teach us that pretension is a bore. Teach us that wit is excessively good-natured, and, like champagne, not only sparkles, but is sweet. Teach us the vulgarity of malignity. Teach us that envy spoils our complexions, and that anxiety destroys our figure.
If they have entered into the spirit if these rules, and if the rules have made sufficient impression on them to become rooted and established in their minds, they will feel how much difference there is between what is said here and what a few logicians may perhaps have written by chance approximating to it in a few passages of their works.
Come in, Adam, and rest; it has been a hard day for thee.