01c. 1714 ADI have read somewhere or other,—in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think,—that history is philosophy teaching by examples.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
03c. 1714 ADIt is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
04c. 1714 ADThe fire of my adversity has purged the mass of my acquaintance.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
05c. 1714 ADHe alone is happy, and he is truly so, who can say, "Welcome life, whatever it brings! welcome death, whatever it is!"Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
06c. 1714 ADLet us march intrepidly wherever we are led by the course of human accidents. Where-ever they lead us, on what coasts soever we are thrown by them, we shall not find ourselves absolutely strangers.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
07c. 1714 ADLiberty is to the collective body what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty no happiness can be enjoyed by society.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
08c. 1714 ADPatriotism must be founded on great principles and supported by great virtue.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
09c. 1714 ADThe providence of God has established such an order in the world, that of all which belongs to us, the least valuable parts can alone fall under the will of others.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
10c. 1714 ADThere is no part of the world from whence we may not admire these planets, which roll, like ours, in different orbits round the same central sun; ... and whilst my soul is thus raised up to heaven, it imports me little what ground I tread upon.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
11c. 1714 ADWe furnish our minds as we furnish our houses—with the fancies of others, and according to the mode and age of our country; we pick up our ideas and notions in common conversation as in schools.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
12c. 1714 ADWhatever is best is safest, lies most out of the reach of human power, can neither be given nor taken away.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
13c. 1714 ADThe shortest and the surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to remount to first principles, and take nobody's word about them.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
14c. 1714 ADIt is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
15c. 1714 ADWe can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
16c. 1714 ADWhatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness, and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
17c. 1714 ADVictory may be honorable to the arms, but shameful to the counsels, of a nation.Viscount Bolingbroke / quote ↗
