William Cobbett

The great security of all is to eat little and to drink nothing that intoxicates. He that eats till he is full is little better than a beast, and he that drinks till he is drunk is quite a beast.

Never - no, not for one moment - believe that any human being, with sense in his skull, will love or respect you on account of your fine or costly clothes.

Endless are the instances of men of bright parts and high spirit having been, by degrees, rendered powerless and despicable by their imaginary wants.

To be without sure and safe friends in the world makes life not worth having; and whom can we be so sure of as of our children?

It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world.

Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives.

Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex; and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them.

Please your eye and plague your heart.

To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.

The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people, have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.

The power which money gives is that of brute force; it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet.

To have a dutiful family, the father's principle of rule must be love, not fear. His sway must be gentle, or he will have only an unwilling and short-lived obedience.

Never esteem men on account of their riches or their station. Respect goodness, find it where you may.

The taste of the times is, unhappily, to give to children something of book-learning, with a view of placing them to live, in some way or other, upon the labour of other people.

Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted.

Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of 'speculation'; but which ought to be called Gambling.

The tendency of taxation is to create a class of persons who do not labor, to take from those who do labor the produce of that labor, and to give it to those who do not labor.

From a very early age I had imbibed the opinion that it was every man's duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it.

Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.

There never yet was, and never will be, a nation permanently great, consisting, for the greater part, of wretched and miserable families.