William Wycherley

Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

Self-command is the main discipline.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious – except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind and keep them shut by force.

People ignore the thing they have the most power over. I know so many people who will go to a protest and do something big on an issue. But they won’t deal with that issue in their home.

Opportunity makes a thief.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. On one side elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.

Any enlightenment which requires to be authenticated, certified, recognized, congratulated, is false, or at least incomplete.