Quote

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write.

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
Write
Thought
Writing
Think
Thinking
Shall

More quotes by William Cobbett

Image
To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.
William Cobbett
Image
The smallness of our desires may contribute reasonably to our wealth.
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
It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world.
William Cobbett
Image
The power which money gives is that of brute force it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet.
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
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
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
Image
All Middlesex is ugly, notwithstanding the millions upon millionswhichit iscontinuallysucking up fromtherestof the kingdom.
William Cobbett
Image
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
Image
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
Image
You never know what you can do till you try.
William Cobbett
Image
Norwich is a very fine city, and the castle, which stands in the middle of it, on a hill, is truly majestic.
William Cobbett
Image
From a very early age I had imbibed the opinion that it was every man's duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it.
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
He who writes badly thinks badly
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
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
Image
Protestations of impartiality I shall make none. Theyare always useless and are besides perfect nonsense, when used bya news-monger.
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