Let me have
A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear
As will disperse itself through all the veins
That the life-weary taker may fall dead
And that the trunk may be diseharg'd of breath
As violently as hasty powder fir'd
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.
Talk no more of the lucky escape of the head
From a flint so unhappily thrown:
I think very different from thousands; indeed
'Twas a lucky escape for the stone.
Wolcot (Peter Pindar). On a Stone thrown at George III.
(See also Goldsmith)
POLICY
3
Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, "If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill."
Bacon—Essays. Of Boldness.
4
Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
Like Æsop's fox, when he had lost his tail, would have all his fellow foxes cut off theirs.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.
6
They had best not stir the rice, though it sticks to the pot.
Cervantes—Don Quixote. Pt. II. Ch. XXXVII.
7
It is better to walk than to run; it is better to stand than to walk; it is better to sit than to stand; it is better to lie than to sit.
Hindu Proverb.
8
Don't throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery.
Philander Johnson See Everybody's Magazine. May, 1920. P. 36.
9
Masterly inactivity.
Sir James Mackintosh—Vindicice Gatticce. Probably from "Strenua inertia." Horace—Epistles. XI. 28.
10
When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to taste a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter,—thinks I, that man has an axe to grind.
Charles Miner—Who'll turn Grindstones? Essays from the Desk of Poor Robert The Scribe. In Wilkesbarre Gleaner. (1811).
11
The publick weal requires that a man should betray, and lye, and massacre.
Montaigne—Essays. Of Profit and Honesty.
12
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still.
Henry V. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 45.
13
To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under 't.
We shall not. I believe, be obliged to alter our
policy of watchful waiting.
Woodrow Wilson—Annual Message. Dec. 2, 1913. Alluding to Mexico.
15
We have stood apart, studiously neutral.
Woodrow Wilson—Message to Congress. Dec. 7, 1915.
POLITICS
(See also Government, Statesmanship)
16
I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law.
Fisher Ames—Speech. Jan., 1788.
17
Man is by nature a civic animal.
Aristotle—Polil. I. 2.
18
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
Attributed to John Arbuthnot, M.D. In "Life of Emerson." P. 165.
19
Listen! John A. Logan is the Head Centre,
the Hub, the King Pin, the Main Spring, Mogul,
and Mugwump of the final plot by which partisanship was installed in the Commission.
Isaac H. Bromley Editorial in the New York Tribune. Feb. 16, 1877.
(See also Porter)
20
It is necessary that I should qualify the doctrine of its being not men, but measures, that I
am determined to support. In a monarchy it is the duty of parliament to look at the men as well as at the measures.
Lord Brougham—In the House of Commons. Nov., 1830.
(See also Burke, Canning, Goldsmith)
21
We are Republicans, and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.
Samuel D. Burchard—One of the Deputation visiting Mr. Blaine. Oct. 29, 1884.
22
You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.
Burke—Reflexions on the Revolution in France. Vol. III. P. 277.
