Quote

Please your eye and plague your heart.

William Cobbett

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Plague
Please
Eye
Heart

More quotes by William Cobbett

Image
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
Image
The ancient nobility and gentry of the kingdom... have been thrust out of all public employment... a race of merchants, and manufacturers and bankers and loan-jobbers and contractors have usurped their place.
William Cobbett
Image
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
Image
Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted.
William Cobbett
Image
Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them.
William Cobbett
Image
When, from the top of any high hill, one looks round the country, and sees the multitude of regularly distributed spires, one not only ceases to wonder that order and religion are maintained, but one is astonished that any such thing as disaffection or irreligion should prevail.
William Cobbett
Image
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.
William Cobbett
Image
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
Image
Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write.
William Cobbett
Image
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
Image
Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty--the shame of being thought poor--it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves.
William Cobbett
Image
A couple of flitches of bacon are worth fifty thousand Methodist sermons and religious tracts. They are great softeners of temper and promoters of domestic harmony.
William Cobbett
Image
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
Image
The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people... have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.
William Cobbett
Image
Praise the child, and you make love to the mother.
William Cobbett
Image
It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.
William Cobbett
Image
Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express.
William Cobbett
Image
Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.
William Cobbett
Image
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins, and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body.
William Cobbett
Image
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.
William Cobbett