Letter to Virginia Governor Patrick Henry (1779-02-03), from William Hayden English, Conquest of the Country Northwest of the River Ohio, 1778–1783, and Life of Gen. George Rogers Clark (Indianapolis: Bowen-Merrill, 1896) vol. 1, pp. 262-263
Context: I know the case is desperate, but, sire, we must either quit the country or attack Mr. Hamilton. No time is to be lost. Was I sure of a re-enforcement I should not attempt it. Who knows what fortune will do for us? Great things have been effected by a few men well conducted. Perhaps we may be fortunate. We have this consolation that our case is just, and that our country will be grateful and not condemn our conduct, in case we fall through; if so, this country as well as Kentucky, I believe, is lost.
“All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.”
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship
“Few men have been admired by their own domestics.”
Book iii. Chap 2. Of Repentance
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Few men have been admired by their own households.
Letter to Arthur de Gobineau, 22 October 1843, Tocqueville Reader, p. 229 http://books.google.com/books?id=JhEVK0UMgFMC&pg=PA229&vq=studied+the+koran&dq=%22few+religions+in+the+world+as+deadly+to+men+as+that+of+Muhammad%22+-tocqueville&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0
Original text: J’ai beaucoup étudié le Koran à cause surtout de notre position vis-à-vis des populations musulmanes en Algérie et dans tout l’Orient. Je vous avoue que je suis sorti de cette étude avec la conviction qu’il y avait eu dans le monde, à tout prendre, peu de religions aussi funestes aux hommes que celle de Mahomet. [...] Elle est, à mon sens, la principale cause de la décadence aujourd’hui si visible du monde musulman, et quoique moins absurde que le polythéisme antique, ses tendances sociales et politiques étant, à mon avis, infiniment plus à redouter, je la regarde relativement au paganisme lui-même comme une décadence plutôt que comme un progrès (Wikisource)
1840s
Context: I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.
Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter IV, Improved Legal Procedure, p. 40
“The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.”
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Letter to the President of the English Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves http://www.vindicatingthefounders.com/library/jay-to-english-society.html (June 1788).
1780s
Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 824.
B 33
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)
Context: As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown.
