Quotes from George Savile


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A prince who will not undergo the difficulty of understanding must undergo the danger of trusting.


Laws are generally not understood by three sorts of persons, viz, by those who make them, by those who execute them, and by those who suffer if they break them.


When the people contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything by their victory but new masters.


Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought; it is only a virtue where men have it whether they will or no.


Our nature hardly allows us to have enough of anything without having too much.


Nothing has an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not on our side.


Most men make little use of their speech than to give evidence against their own understanding.


Malice is of a low stature, but it hath very long arms.


A princely mind will undo a private family.


There is reason to think the most celebrated philosophers would have been bunglers at business; but the reason is because they despised it.


Nothing would more contribute to make a man wise than to have always an enemy in his view.


Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.


Love is a passion that hath friends in the garrison.


If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers.


He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things.


A man man may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him prisoner.


No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool.


The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached on that subject.


The best Qualification of a Prophet is to have a good Memory.


The vanity of teaching doth oft tempt a man to forget that he is a blockhead.