Quotes & Sayings About Bolingbroke

The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them. — Henry Bolingbroke

No religion ever appeared in the world whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind. It makes right reason a law in every possible definition of the word. And therefore, even supposing it to have been purely a human invention, it had been the most amiable and the most useful invention that was ever imposed on mankind for their good. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Driving across the world in a pink tuk tuk is something I would recommend to everyone. It's proved to me that humans are essentially kind, the humour is the key to survival and that risks are always worth taking. — Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent

A long novitiate of acquaintance should precede the vows of friendship. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness; and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

I think it indisputable that the distance between the intellectual faculties of different men is greater than that between the same faculties in some men and some other animals. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Dr. Manton taught my youth to yawn, and prepared me to be a High-Churchman, that I might never hear him read nor read him more. — Henry Bolingbroke

There is a man in Bolingbroke who lisps and always testifies in prayer-meeting. He says, 'If you can't thine like an electric thtar thine like a candlethtick. — L.M. Montgomery

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue. — Henry Bolingbroke

The house of the Plantagenets, from Henry II to Richard III himself, was brimming with blood. In their lust for power the members of the family turned upon one another. King John murdered, or caused to be murdered, his nephew Arthur; Richard II despatched his uncle, Thomas of Gloucester; Richard II was in turn killed on the orders of his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke; Henry VI was killed in the Tower on the orders of his cousin, Edward IV; Edward IV murdered his brother, Clarence, just as his own two sons were murdered by their uncle. It is hard to imagine a family more steeped in slaughter and revenge, of which the Wars of the Roses were only one effusion. It might be thought that some curse had been laid upon the house of the Plantagenets, except of course that in the world of kings the palm of victory always goes to the most violent and the most ruthless. It could be said that the royal family was the begetter of organized crime. — Peter Ackroyd

You have deceived our trust, and made us doff our easy robes of peace, to crush our old limbs in ungentle steel. — Henry Bolingbroke

Lord Bolingbroke, who was an eighteenth-century political philosopher, called history "philosophy taught with examples. — David McCullough

God who placed me here will do what He pleases with me hereafter, and He knows best what to do. — Henry St. John Bolingbroke

Worry is the only insupportable misfortune of life. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Patriotism must be founded on great principals and supported by great virtue. — Henry Bolingbroke

What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us! — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal the mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne. — William Shakespeare

Be as affronted as you please, just don't volunteer anything. If you see what appears to be an opening in debate, remember that it was ingeniously laid down in front of you by Bolingbroke as coquettes drop handkerchiefs at the feet of men they would ensnare. — Neal Stephenson

Cunning pays no regard to virtue, and is but the low mimic of reason. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death. — Samuel Johnson

What Anacharsis said of the vine may aptly enough be said of prosperity. She bears the three grapes of drunkenness, pleasure, and sorrow; and happy is it if the last can cure the mischief which the former work. When afflictions fail to have their due effect, the case is desperate. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Lawyers must pry into the recesses of the human heart, and become well acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover the abstract reason of all laws. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

There is so much trouble in coming into the world, and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that 'tis hardly worth while to be here at all. — Viscount Henry St. John Bolingbroke

LORD BOLINGBROKE, the eighteenth-century political philosopher, said that "history is philosophy teaching by examples." Thucydides is reported to have said much the same thing two thousand years earlier. Jefferson — David McCullough

Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again: and by and by
Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing. — William Shakespeare

O that I were a mockery king of snow
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke
To melt myself away in water drops! — William Shakespeare

It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life. Wise men spend their time in mirth; it is only fools who are serious. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Pride defeats its own end, by bringing the man who seeks esteem and reverence into contempt. — Henry Bolingbroke

Indifference must be a crime in us, to be ranked but one degree below treachery; for deserting the commonwealth is next to betraying it. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

As well as might we say that a ship is built, loaded and manned for the sake of any particular pilot, instead of acknowledging that the pilot is made for the sake of the ship, her lading, and her crew, who are always the owners in the political vessel; as to say that kingdoms were instituted for kings, not kings for kingdoms. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Why, look you, I am whipp'd and scourg'd with rods,
Nettled and stung with pismires[nettles], when I hear
Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke. — William Shakespeare

Our liberty cannot be taken away unless the people are themselves accomplices. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

I have read somewhere or other,-in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think,-that history is philosophy teaching by examples. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labor on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors ... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done! — Frederick Douglass

God himself, with reverence be it spoken, is not an absolute but a limited monarch, limited by the rule which infinite wisdom prescribes to infinite power. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Faction is to party what the superlative is to the positive. Party is a political evil, and faction is the worst of all parties. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

The fire of my adversity has purged the mass of my acquaintance. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

To converse with historians is to keep good company; many of them were excellent men, and those who were not, have taken care to appear such in their writings. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Nations, like men, have their infancy. — Henry Bolingbroke

This a sacred rule we find
Among the nicest of mankind,
(Which never might exception brook
From Hobbes even down to Bolingbroke,)
To doubt of facts, however true,
Unless they know the causes too. — Charles Churchill