“The spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this great reform would insensibly become agricultural: commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and corruption, would gradually decline; more natural habits would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complication of political relations would be so far simplified that every individual might feel and understand why he loved his country, and took a personal interest in its welfare.”

A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this great reform would insensibly become agricultural: commerce,…" by Percy Bysshe Shelley?
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley 246
English Romantic poet 1792–1822

Related quotes

Julian of Norwich photo
Jean-Baptiste Say photo
Dadabhai Naoroji photo

“He was of opinion that we should be able to convince the general English public, the working man particularly, that the reforms that I advanced would be far more beneficial to the English nation, particularly to the working man…If India is prosperous and rich, she would buy far more English produce and give work proportionately to the working man.”

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917) Indian politician

His noting in his dairy after his contesting election in 1886 page=10.
Narrow-majority’ and ‘Bow-and-agree’: Public Attitudes Towards the Elections of the First Asian MPs in Britain, Dadabhai Naoroji and Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree, 1885-1906

Edward Heath photo

“It would not be in the interests of the Community that its enlargement should take place except with the full-hearted consent of the parliaments and its peoples of the new member countries.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Speech in Paris (5 May 1970), quoted in The Times (24 December 1970), p. 3
Leader of the Opposition

Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“Should they answer that, if impunity were assured, they would do what was most to their selfish interest, that would be a confession that they were criminally minded; should they say that they would not do so, they would be granting that all things in and of themselves immoral should be avoided.”
Si responderint se impunitate proposita facturos, quod expediat, facinorosos se esse fateantur, si negent, omnia turpia per se ipsa fugienda esse concedant.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book III, section 39; translated by Walter Miller
De Officiis – On Duties (44 BC)

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Gustave de Molinari photo
Peter Mere Latham photo

“It would be a great thing to understand pain in all its meanings.”

Peter Mere Latham (1789–1875) English physician and educator

Book II, p. 474.
Collected Works

Edgar Allan Poe photo

“I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind — that he would be considered a madman is evident. How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very generous spirit — truly feeling what all merely profess — must inevitably find itself misconceived in every direction — its motives misinterpreted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon as meanness in the last degree — and so on with other virtues. This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so soared above the plane of their race is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all the biographies of the "good and the great," while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Related topics