“There be no mutual contract made upon certain conditions, but if the conditions be not fulfilled the party injured is loosed from the contract.” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“Every man by nature is a free man born, that is, by nature no man cometh out of the womb under any civil subjection to king, prince, or judge, to master, captain, conqueror, teacher, &c, because freedom is natural to all.” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“Strength as strength victorious, is not law nor reason.” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“The first, the ultimate, and native subject of all power is the community, as reasonable men naturally inclining to a society ; but the ethical and political subject, or the legal and positive receptacle, of this power is various, according to the various constitutions of the policy.” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“If all men be born, as concerning civil power, alike (for no man cometh out of the womb with a diadem on his head, or a sceptre in his hand), and yet men united in a society may give crown and sceptre to this man, and not to this man, then this power was in this united society.” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“It most seldom chanceth that kings so temper themselves that their will never swerveth from that which is just and right; again, that they be furnished with so great sharpness of judgment and wisdom that every one of them seeth so much as is sufficient. Therefore the fault or default of men maketh that it is safer and more tolerable that many should have the government, that they may mutually one help another, one teach and admonish another, and if any advance himself higher than is meet, there may be overseers and masters to restrain his wilfulness.” – John Calvin, “Institution of Christian Religion” (trans. Thomas Norton, in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“The reason of man can only imperfectly judge—nay, and is often therein cozened—hence it must needs follow that all human constitutions are of necessity liable to imperfection, error, and injustice.” – William Ames, “Conscience” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“A division of things is by the law of nations. Nevertheless, by the common consent it may, upon just grounds, be somewhere enacted that almost all possessions should be in common.” – William Ames, “Conscience” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“Man cannot survive on righteous vindication alone.” – Trae Crowder, Liberal Redneck
“Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?” – Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (emphasis in original)
“To be taken in hand and led, like being a child again, even without the innocence, a child—it’s like being given a prize, an extra slice of childhood when you least expect it.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“Your smallest action sets off another somewhere else, and is set off by it. Keep an eye open, an ear cocked. Tread warily, follow instructions.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“The only beginning is birth and the only end is death—if you can’t count on that, what can you count on?” – Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.” – Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
“Let all that preach or print affix their names that we may know from whom. The contrary is a kind of unwarrantable modesty at the best. If it be truth they write, why do they not own it? If untruth, why do they write? Some such must either suppress themselves for shame or fear, and they that dare not own what they do, they suspect the magistrate or themselves.” – John Saltmarsh, “Smoke in the Temple” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“Let there be liberty of the press for printing, to those that are not allowed pulpits for preaching. Let that light come in at the window which cannot come in at the door, that all may speak and write one way, that cannot another.” – John Saltmarsh, “Smoke in the Temple” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“It is not easy by the light of nature to determine more than that there is a God. The sun may be that God. The moon may be that God. To frame a right conception or notion of the First Being, wherein all other things had their being, is not possible by the light of nature alone. Indeed, if a man consider there is a will of the Supreme Cause, it is an hard thing for him by the light of nature to conceive how there can be any sin committed. And therefore the magistrate cannot easily determine what sins are against the light of nature, and what not.” – Sir John Wildman, “Whitehall Debates” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“All civil power whatsoever, either in natural or civil things, is not able to bind men’s judgments, but only their actions.” – Henry Ireton, “Whitehall Debates” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“The necessary thing, that which necessarily leads all men into civil agreements or contracts, or to make commonwealths, is the necessity of it for preserving peace. Because otherwise, if there were no such thing, but every man were left to his own will, men’s contrary wills, lusts, and passions would lead every one to the destruction of another.” – Henry Ireton, “Whitehall Debates” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same as that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“Of all the productions of land, milk is perhaps the most perishable. In the warm season, when it is most abundant, it will scarce keep four-and-twenty hours. The farmer, by making it into fresh butter, stores a small part of it for a week: by making it into salt butter, for a year: and by making it into cheese, he stores a much greater part of it for several years.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“Any man that makes a bargain, and does find afterwards ’tis for the worse, yet is bound to stand to it.” – Henry Ireton, “Putney Debates” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)
“A man’s life’s no more than to say One.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 5.2
“’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes between the pass and fell incensed points of mighty opposites.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 5.2
“Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, when our deep plots do fail: and that should teach us there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 5.2
“Let Hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew, and dog will have his day.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 5.1
“Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away: o, that that earth which kept the world in awe should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw!” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 5.1
“There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam’s profession.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 5.1
“That we would do we should do when we would; for this would changes, and hath abatements and delays as many as there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; and then this should is like a spendthrift sigh that hurts by easing.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 4.7 (emphases in original)
“Youth no less becomes the light and careless livery that it wears than settled age his sables and his weeds, importing health and graveness.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 4.7