Sourced and curated.

Remember that Time is Money.

Rebellion to Tyrants is obedience to God.

The American Instructor: or Young Man's Best Companion · 1748

★ 8.5

Epitaph

1775

★ 8.4

Diligence is the mother of good luck.

1736

★ 7.6

Early to Bed and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy and wise.

1735

★ 7.5

Fish and Visitors stink after three days.

1736

★ 7.5

Haste makes Waste.

1753

★ 7.5

Little strokes fell great Oaks.

1750

★ 7.4

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 7.2

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 7.1

Essay · Political literature

The body of B. Franklin, Printer; Like the cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its lettering and gilding, Lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more, In a new & more perfect edition, Corrected and amended By the Author.

1755

★ 7.1

Epitaph

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency, but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes!

1728

★ 7.0

Letter

Letters of Benjamin Franklin · 1789

★ 7.0

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

1837

★ 7.0

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 7.0

Come out of your warm, angular house, resounding with few voices, into the chill, grand, instantaneous night, with such a Presence as a full moon in the clouds.

1838

★ 6.9

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 6.9

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

I am about Courting a Girl I have had but little Acquaintance with; how shall I come to a Knowledge of her Fawlts? and whether she has the Virtues I imagine she has? Answ. Commend her among her Female Acquaintance.

Compania General de Tabacos de Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue · 1927

★ 6.9

Newspaper

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

1732

★ 6.0

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

United States v. Schwimmer · 1929

★ 6.0

He that lieth down with Dogs, shall rise up with Fleas.

1733

★ 5.5

God helps them that help themselves.

1736

★ 5.5

Experience keeps a dear school, yet Fools will learn In no other.

1743

★ 5.5

When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.

1746

★ 5.5

Genius without Education is like Silver in the Mine.

1750

★ 5.5

Love your Neighbor; yet don't pull down your Hedge.

1754

★ 5.5

A republic, if you can keep it.

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.

1787

★ 5.5

Novel · Coming of age story

Louisa May Alcott

Little Women · 1868

★ 5.5

Tart Words make no Friends: a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a Gallon of Vinegar.

1744

★ 5.5

Old Boys have their Playthings as well as young Ones; the Difference is only in the Price.

1752

★ 5.5

Men are what their mothers made them.

Fate · 1860

★ 5.5

Our chief want in life is, somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Considerations by the Way · 1860

★ 5.5

He that falls in love with himself, will have no Rivals.

1738

★ 5.4

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

The American Scholar · 1837

★ 5.4

Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces.

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 5.4

All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres.

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 5.4

Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid.

Literary Ethics · 1838

★ 5.3

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

1911

★ 5.3

Nature · 1836

★ 5.2

Avarice and happiness never saw each other, how then should they become acquainted.

1734

★ 5.2

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of.

Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.

1746

★ 5.2

1923

★ 5.2

A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.

Fisher Ames

1795

★ 5.1

The truth is, that the law is always approaching, and never reaching, consistency. It is forever adopting new principles from life at one end, and it always retains old ones from history at the other, which have not yet been absorbed or sloughed off. It will become entirely consistent only when it ceases to grow.

A tough but nervous, tenacious but restless race; materially ambitious, yet prone to introspection, and subject to waves of religious emotion... A race whose typical member is eternally torn between a passion for righteousness and a desire to get on in the world.

1880

★ 5.1

Historical literature

Samuel Eliot Morison

1921

★ 5.0

Glass, China, and Reputation, are easily crack’d, and never well mended.

1750

★ 4.7

Great Estates may venture more; Little Boats must keep near Shore.

1751

★ 4.7

Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.

Montaigne; or, the Skeptic · 1850

★ 4.5

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

That there is a Devil, is a Thing Doubted by none but such as are under the Influence of the Devil. For any to Deny the Being of a Devil must be from an Ignorance or Profaneness, worse than diabolical.

Essays: Second Series (Emerson) · 1844

★ 4.4

Religious literature

Cotton Mather

The Wonders of the Invisible World · 1693

★ 4.4

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome.

It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.

Introduction to Spinoza's Ethics · 1910

★ 4.4

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.

1897

★ 4.3

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

It will need more than the Nineteenth Amendment to convince me that there are no differences between men and women, or that legislation cannot take those differences into account.

Towne v. Eisner · 1918

★ 4.3

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Adkins v. Children's Hospital · 1923

★ 4.3

The poor have little, Beggars none; The rich too much, Enough not one.

1733

★ 3.9

Take counsel in Wine, but resolve afterwards in Water.

1733

★ 3.9

He that cannot obey, cannot command.

1734

★ 3.9

Be slow in chusing a Friend, be slower in changing.

1735

★ 3.9

Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.

1735

★ 3.9

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

1736

★ 3.9

Creditors have better memories than Debtors.

1736

★ 3.9

Blessed is he that expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed.

1739

★ 3.9

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his Portion.

1744

★ 3.9

What you would seem to be, be really.

1744

★ 3.9

He who multiplies Riches multiplies Cares.

1744

★ 3.9

If you’d lose a troublesome Visitor, lend him money.

1744

★ 3.9

Many complain of their Memory, few of their Judgment.

1745

★ 3.9

The most exquisite Folly is made of Wisdom spun too fine.

1746

★ 3.9

The Sting of a Reproach is the Truth of it.

1746

★ 3.9

Drink does not drown Care, but waters it and makes it grow faster.

1749

★ 3.9

If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins.

1749

★ 3.9

Anger is never without a Reason, but seldom with a good One.

1753

★ 3.9

The Horse thinks one thing, and he that saddles him another.

No nation was ever ruined by trade.

1754

★ 3.9

The Annual Register, Or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, For the Year 1779 · 1780

★ 3.9

Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin · 1790

★ 3.9

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.

That if all Printers were determin’d not to print any thing till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin · 1790

★ 3.9

Essay · Newspaper

1731

★ 3.8

Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good throughout.

1738

★ 3.8

If evils come not, Then our fears are vain; And if they do, Fear but augments the pain.

1741

★ 3.8

How few there are who have courage enough to own their Faults, or resolution enough to mend them!

1743

★ 3.8

Hide not your Talents, they for Use were made: “What’s a Sun-Dial in the Shade?”

1750

★ 3.8

‘Tis easier to suppress the first Desire, than to satisfy all that follow it.

1751

★ 3.8

For want of Nail the Shoe is lost; For want of a Shoe the Horse is lost; For want of a Horse the Rider is lost.

1752

★ 3.8

With the Past as past I have nothing to do, nor with the Future as future. I live now.

1839

★ 3.8

Thou art to me a delicious torment.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

1843

★ 3.8

To fill the hour—that is happiness.

Essays: Second Series (Emerson) · 1844

★ 3.8

The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.

New England Reformers · 1844

★ 3.8

We boil at different degrees.

All Property indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it.

Eloquence · 1870

★ 3.8

Letter

1783

★ 3.7

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.

1831

★ 3.7

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

1838

★ 3.7

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.7

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Women have been called queens a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling.

1860

★ 3.7

Novel

Louisa May Alcott

1869

★ 3.7

The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.

There are always two parties, the party of the Past and the party of the Future; the Establishment and the Movement.

The Common Law · 1880

★ 3.7

Essay · Magazine

A short life in the saddle, Lord! Not long life by the fire.

1882

★ 3.7

Poem

Louise Imogen Guiney

1893

★ 3.7

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 3.7

At best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter.

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 3.7

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 3.7

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 3.7

In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art which belonged to all who could behold it.

The Conduct of Life · 1860

★ 3.6

Here comes the orator! with his flood of words, and his drop of reason.

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.

1735

★ 3.6

Essay · Newspaper

Edward Everett

1837

★ 3.6

I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat.

I slept and dreamed that life was beauty. I woke-and found that life was duty.

The American Scholar · 1837

★ 3.6

Ellen Sturgis Hooper

Beauty and Duty · 1840

★ 3.6

Poem

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.

James Russell Lowell

The Vision of Sir Launful · 1848

★ 3.6

What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.

Wendell Phillips

1864

★ 3.6

Form ever follows function.

Louis Henri Sullivan

1896

★ 3.6

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 3.6

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

Introduction to Spinoza's Ethics · 1910

★ 3.6

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

Introduction to Spinoza's Ethics · 1910

★ 3.6

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

The idea of knowing exactly where you're going is overrated.

1922

★ 3.6

Song · Indie music

You got strange powers.

The Magnetic Fields

Strange Powers · 1994

★ 3.6

Interview · Magazine

Sarah Sze

The New Yorker · 2012

★ 3.6

Freedom of thought and the right of private judgment, in matters of conscience, driven from every other corner of the earth, direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.

Samuel Adams

1776

★ 3.5

Revolutions are not made; they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.

Wendell Phillips

1852

★ 3.5

Where Slavery is, there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is, there Slavery cannot be.

Charles Sumner

1864

★ 3.5

The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.

The Common Law · 1880

★ 3.5

Let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans... If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.

Henry Cabot Lodge

1888

★ 3.5

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress · 1905

★ 3.5

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress · 1905

★ 3.5

What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.

The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress · 1905

★ 3.5

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

1913

★ 3.5

Dialogue · Philosophical literature

The first time you do something only happens once.

1925

★ 3.5

Interview · Magazine

Chris Burden

2008

★ 3.5

Song · Great American songbook · Patriotic songs

My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing: Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims' pride, From ev'ry mountain-side Let freedom ring.

Samuel Francis Smith

America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee) · 1832

★ 3.5

Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.

Charles Sanders Peirce

1903

★ 3.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.

The government ought not to use evidence obtained and only obtainable, by a criminal act...for my part I think it a less evil that some criminals could escape than that, the Government should play an ignoble part.

Abrams v. United States · 1919

★ 3.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

There is nothing impossible, therefore, in the existence of the supernatural: its existence seems to me decidedly probable; there is infinite room for it on every side.

Olmstead v. United States · 1928

★ 3.5

America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.

1931

★ 3.5

Historical literature

Samuel Eliot Morison

1965

★ 3.4

When men are employ'd, they are best content'd; for on the days they worked they were good-natur'd and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day's work, they spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome.

Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin · 1790

★ 2.9

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

1922

★ 2.8

Eat to live, and not live to eat.

1733

★ 2.2

To lengthen thy Life, lessen thy Meals.

1733

★ 2.2

Happy’s the Wooing that’s not long a doing.

1734

★ 2.2

In Marriage without love, there will be Love without Marriage.

1734

★ 2.2

He that waits upon Fortune, is never sure of a dinner.

1734

★ 2.2

Well done is better than well said.

1737

★ 2.2

Wink at small faults-remember thou hast great ones.

1738

★ 2.2

Who has deceiv’d thee so oft as thy self?

1738

★ 2.2

Search others for their Virtues, thyself for thy Vices.

1738

★ 2.2

Keep your eye wide open before Marriage, half shut afterwards.

1738

★ 2.2

Hear no ill of a Friend, nor speak any of an Enemy.

1739

★ 2.2

E’er you remark another’s sin, bid your own conscience look within.

1741

★ 2.2

At 20 years of age the will reigns; at 30 the wit; at 40 the judgment.

1741

★ 2.2

To err is human, to repent divine; to persist devilish.

1742

★ 2.2

‘Tis easier to prevent bad Habits than to break them.

1745

★ 2.2

Beware of little Expences: a small leak will sink a great Ship.

1745

★ 2.2

You can bear your own Faults, why not a Fault in your Wife?

1750

★ 2.2

Success has ruin’d many a Man.

1752

★ 2.2

The Way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

There never was a good War, or a bad Peace.

1758

★ 2.2

Letter

1783

★ 2.2

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 2.2

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 2.2

The good or ill hap of a good or ill Life, is the good or ill choice of a good or ill Wife.

1745

★ 2.1

Many a Man thinks he is buying Pleasure, when he is really selling himself a slave to it.

I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

1750

★ 2.1

Essay · Political literature

1766

★ 2.1

Character is higher than intellect.

The American Scholar · 1837

★ 2.1

Happy is the house that shelters a friend.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 2.1

Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 2.1

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

1847

★ 2.1

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

1850

★ 2.1

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Beauty · 1860

★ 2.1

What a glorious morning is this.

Samuel Adams

1775

★ 2.0

Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 2.0

People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 2.0

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

The Conservative · 1841

★ 2.0

Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

1897

★ 2.0

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 2.0

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

Thunder is the voice of God, and, therefore, to be dreaded.

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 2.0

Increase Mather

1684

★ 1.9

A good writer seems to be writing about himself, (but never is,) but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself, & all things.

1867

★ 1.9

The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant, was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin.