“Nothing stokes human creativity like the desire to kill a motherfucker you don’t like.” – The Fat Electrician, “America’s Secret Weapon That Won WW2 – VT Fuze”
“Men in all ages have, through their supine carelessness, degenerated from the righteousness of their first principles.” – The Worshipful Company of Saddlers (quoted by A. S. P. Woodhouse in Puritanism & Liberty)
“The function of the state is to preserve peace and order and to guarantee the freedom of the individual; a wise government will be more willing to repeal old laws than to enact new ones, for the intention of laws is to check the commission of vice, but liberty is the best school of virtue.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Human nature being what it was, a measure of democracy was the best protection against tyranny.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Objectives in practical politics are always limited and generally selfish.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“We that are true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.4
“To some kind of men their graces serve them but as enemies.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.3
“How full of briers is this working-day world!” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 1.3
“The true temper and proper employment of a Christian is always to be working like the sea, and purging ignorance out of his understanding and exchanging notions and apprehensions imperfect for more perfect, and forgetting things behind to press forward.” – Henry Robinson, Liberty and Conscience
“The strong Puritan impulse to action results in the constant intrusion of religion into the secular sphere in an effort to enforce the standards of the holy community upon the world, and in a marked tendency to press on, in the name of that ideal, from the quest for religious liberty to the quest for political power.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Its zeal for reformation results in part from the fact that the Puritan temper is in general active rather than contemplative. Though its official creed repudiates works as a means of salvation, it emphasizes them as a sign; and the Puritan has an overwhelming sense of one’s responsibility to use every effort for advancing the kingdom of God.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty (emphases in original)
“The more the pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 1.2
“There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 4.3
“When love begins to sicken and decay, it useth an enforced ceremony.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 4.2
“The Puritan turned to the theological aspects of a question as naturally as the modern man turns to the economic; and his first instinct was to seek guidance within the covers of his Bible—or was it rather to seek there justification for a policy already determined on other, on political and economic, grounds?” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Had not God given the Israelites kings, and whenever they could do so with impunity, had not that model people knocked them about?” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“The law taken abstract from its original reason and end is made a shell without a kernel, a shadow without a substance and a body without a soul. It is the execution of laws according to their equity and reason, which is the spirit that gives life to authority.” – John Lilburne, a/k/a Freeborn John (quoted by A. S. P. Woodhouse in Puritanism & Liberty)
“Cats are obligate carnivores, which means they have a limited ability to digest anything other than meat. Living in close quarters with an animal that might consider you dinner isn’t generally a recipe for success.” – Carrie Arnold, “Out of the Wild and Into Our Homes”
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 2.1
“Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma or a hideous dream: the genius and the mortal instruments are then in council; and the state of man, like to a little kingdom, suffers then the nature of an insurrection.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 2.1
“’Tis a common proof that lowliness is young ambition’s ladder, whereto the climber-upward turns his face; but when he once attains the utmost round, he then unto the ladder turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 2.1
“The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins remorse from power.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 2.1
“Every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 1.3
“Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, can be retentive to the strength of spirit; but life, being weary of these worldly bars, never lacks power to dismiss itself.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 1.3
“Men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 1.3
“Fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they do always reason themselves out again. What! a speaker is but a prater, a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry V 5.2
“Old I do wax; and from my weary limbs honour is cudgell’d.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry V 5.1
“The man that did once sell the lion’s skin while the beast liv’d was kill’d with hunting him.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry V 4.3
“All things are ready if our minds be so.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry V 4.3
“There is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some making the wars their bulwark that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men they have no wings to fly from God.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry V 4.1