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Please your eye and plague your heart.

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
Eye
Heart
Plague
Please

More quotes by William Cobbett

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Freedom is not an empty sound it is not an abstract idea it is not a thing that nobody can feel. It means, - and it means nothing else, - the full and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you have not this, if this be not well secured to you, you may call yourself what you will, but you are a slave.
William Cobbett
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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.
William Cobbett
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Learning consists of ideas, and not of the noise that is made by the mouth.
William Cobbett
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Norwich is a very fine city, and the castle, which stands in the middle of it, on a hill, is truly majestic.
William Cobbett
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Without bread all is misery.
William Cobbett
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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.
William Cobbett
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I was a countryman and a father before I was a writer on political subjects... Born and bred up in the sweet air myself, I was resolved that my children should be bred up in it too.
William Cobbett
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I set out as a sort of self-dependent politician. My opinions were my own. I dashed at all prejudices. I scorned to follow anybodyin matter of opinion.... All were, therefore, offended at my presumption, as they deemed it.
William Cobbett
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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.
William Cobbett
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Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of speculation but which ought to be called Gambling.
William Cobbett
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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?
William Cobbett
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All Middlesex is ugly, notwithstanding the millions upon millionswhichit iscontinuallysucking up fromtherestof the kingdom.
William Cobbett
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All my plans in private life all my pursuits all my designs, wishes, and thoughts, have this one great object in view: the overthrow of the ruffian Boroughmongers. If I write grammars if I write on agriculture if I sow, plant, or deal in seeds whatever I do has first in view the destruction of those infamous tyrants.
William Cobbett
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You never know what you can do till you try.
William Cobbett
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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.
William Cobbett
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Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted.
William Cobbett
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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.
William Cobbett
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To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.
William Cobbett
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The smallness of our desires may contribute reasonably to our wealth.
William Cobbett
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But I do not remember ever having seen a newspaper in the house and, most certainly, that privation did not render us less industrious, happy, or free.
William Cobbett