1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
Context: Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art. To give praise which is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.
1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
“Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art.”
Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
1770s
The American Leviathan: The Republic in the Machine Age (1931) co-written with William Beard, p. 39
Context: If this statement by Judge Cooley is true, and the authority for it is unimpeachable, then the theory that the Constitution is a written document is a legal fiction. The idea that it can be understood by a study of its language and the history of its past development is equally mythical. It is what the Government and the people who count in public affairs recognize and respect as such, what they think it is. More than this. It is not merely what it has been, or what it is today. It is always becoming something else and those who criticize it and the acts done under it, as well as those who praise, help to make it what it will be tomorrow.
“The most truly generous persons are those who give silently without hope of praise or reward.”
Source: Caddie Woodlawn's Family
Friday Sermon at Tehran University: The Americans in Najaf Are Bloodthirsty Wolves http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/202.htm August 2004.
Americans bloodthirsty wolves
“Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature’s chief masterpiece is writing well.”
Essay on Poetry (published 1723).
for then thou wilt use them well, and they will be material for thee. Only attend to thyself, and resolve to be a good man in every act which thou doest; and remember...
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII, 58
