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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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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
Air
Subjects
Sweet
Writer
Born
Countryman
Father
Bred
Political
Countrymen
Children
Resolved

More quotes by William Cobbett

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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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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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Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request. It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world.
William Cobbett
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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
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Without bread all is misery.
William Cobbett
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DEAL is a most villainous place. It is full of filthy-looking people.Great desolationof abomination has beengoing on here.
William Cobbett
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The smallness of our desires may contribute reasonably to our wealth.
William Cobbett
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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
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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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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
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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.
William Cobbett
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Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives.
William Cobbett
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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.
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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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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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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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
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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.
William Cobbett
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Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write.
William Cobbett
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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.
William Cobbett