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The truth is that the fall of Napoleon is the hardest blow that our taxing system ever felt. It is now impossible to make people believe that immense fleets and armies are necessary.

William Cobbett

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William Cobbett
Age: 72 †
Born: 1763
Born: March 9
Died: 1835
Died: June 18
Biographer
Farmer
Journalist
Pamphleteer
Political Writer
Politician
Farnham
Surrey
Dick Retort
Peter Porcupine
People
System
Napoleon
Impossible
Armies
Fall
Immense
Felt
Hardest
Truth
Blow
Ever
Army
Believe
Necessary
Fleets
Make
Military
Taxing

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It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things to sound instead of sense.
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I defy you to agitate any fellow with a full stomach.
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Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.
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If the people of Sheffield could only receive a tenth part of what their knives sell for by retail in America, Sheffield might pave its streets with silver.
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Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.
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Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to [money management] for. ... want of attention to pecuniary matters ... has impeded the progress of science and of genius itself.
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The town of GUILDFORD, which (taken with its environs) I, who have seen so many, many towns, think the prettiest, and, taken all together, the most agreeable and most happy-looking, that I ever saw in my life.
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Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives.
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The Norfolk people are quick and smart in their motions and their speaking. Very neat and trim in all their farming concerns and very skilful. Their land is good, their roads are level, and the bottom of their soil is dry, to be sure and these are great advantages but they are diligent and make the most of everything.
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The smallness of our desires may contribute reasonably to our wealth.
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However roguish a man may be, he always loves to deal with an honest man.
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But what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, the metropolis of the empire?
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Dancing is at once rational & healthful: it gives animal spirits it is the natural amusement of young people, & such it has been from the days of Moses.
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DEAL is a most villainous place. It is full of filthy-looking people.Great desolationof abomination has beengoing on here.
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He who writes badly thinks badly
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It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.
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It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world.
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Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write.
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A full belly to the labourer was, in my opinion, the foundation of public morals and the only source of real public peace.
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Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted.
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