“The passion for office among members of Congress is very great, if not absolutely disreputable, and greatly embarrasses the operations of the government. They create offices by their own votes and then seek to fill them themselves.”

Speech at the public dinner at Fowler's Garden, Lexington, Kentucky, May 16, 1829, printed in Niles' Weekly Register, Vol. 36 (1829), at p. 399.

Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mécontents et un ingrat.
Quoted in Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV (1751), ch.26

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 128.

Review of The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (1827) by Sir Walter Scott, in the Christian Examiner (September - October 1827)

Diary (14 February 1879)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

"Night Thoughts of a Quantum Physicist" (February 1995); republished in Facing Up: Science And Its Cultural Adversaries (2001)

April 27, 2010 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/36250_Tim_Blair_Investigative_Reporter&only

1910s, California's Policies Proclaimed (Feb. 21, 1911)

Part 3, Section 3
Part 3, Section 3
Source: A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 2: Of the passions
Context: We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
Context: What may at first occur on this head, is, that as nothing can be contrary to truth or reason, except what has a reference to it, and as the judgments of our understanding only have this reference, it must follow, that passions can be contrary to reason only so far as they are accompany'd with some judgment or opinion. According to this principle, which is so obvious and natural, `tis only in two senses, that any affection can be call'd unreasonable. First, When a passion, such as hope or fear, grief or joy, despair or security, is founded on the supposition or the existence of objects, which really do not exist. Secondly, When in exerting any passion in action, we chuse means insufficient for the design'd end, and deceive ourselves in our judgment of causes and effects. Where a passion is neither founded on false suppositions, nor chuses means insufficient for the end, the understanding can neither justify nor condemn it. `Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. `Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. `Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledge'd lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. A trivial good may, from certain circumstances, produce a desire superior to what arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment; nor is there any thing more extraordinary in this, than in mechanics to see one pound weight raise up a hundred by the advantage of its situation. In short, a passion must be accompany'd with some false judgment. in order to its being unreasonable; and even then `tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment.