As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about it.—George Eliot.
Government.—The proper function of a government is to make it easy for people to do good and difficult for them to do evil.—Gladstone.
Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.—Burke.
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.—Burke.
Government owes its birth to the necessity of preventing and repressing the injuries which the associated individuals had to fear from one another. It is the sentinel who watches, in order that the common laborer be not disturbed.—Abbé Raynal.
But I say to you, and to our whole country, and to all the crowned heads and aristocratic powers and feudal systems that exist, that it is to self-government, the great principle of popular representation and administration, the system that lets in all to participate in the counsels that are to assign the good or evil to all, that we may owe what we are and what we hope to be.—Daniel Webster.
The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.—Montesquieu.
Of governments, that of the mob is the most sanguinary, that of soldiers the most expensive, and that of civilians the most vexatious.—Colton.
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest, and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.—Thomas Paine.
Grace.—As amber attracts a straw, so does beauty admiration, which only lasts while the warmth continues; but virtue, wisdom, goodness, and real worth, like the loadstone, never lose their power. These are the true graces, which, as Homer feigns, are linked and tied hand in hand, because it is by their influence that human hearts are so firmly united to each other.—Burton.