J. L. B. Smith Quotes

In a militia, the character of the laborer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.

In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so.

Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.

I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.

To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it.

Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity.

It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.

Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back

All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.

The great affair, we always find, is to get money.

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.

Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.

To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.

The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.

All jobs are created in direct proportion to the amount of capital employed.

But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about.

Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.

When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.

Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it.

The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.

Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.

The principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our conditiona desire which?comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go into the grave.

In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.

The Brooklyn Bridge and I grew up together.

Those playful fancies of the mighty sky.

But nobody can run from their own demons.

Don't make the mistake of bringing your heart down here with you, there is no place for it in Furnace.

Only another twenty thousand or so days of this to go.

There always has to be someone to take the punches. That's how it works. It isn't fair, it isn't right, but that kid licking slop off the floor over there means that we get to eat in peace.

And when reality denies you the tools you need for survival you grab them from wherever you can.

Nobody cares. You shouldn't either.

One last breath. We all have to take one eventually. It was over.

Don't need a degree in rocket science to do this job.

And when reality goes, sanity has no reason.

I helped you because you're new, and because when there's two people in a cell then there's only a fifty percent chance they'll take you.

Let me know if you're going to do something stupid, kid, 'cause I'll ditch you like that.

That mush plays havoc downstairs, you know?

Trust me-that toilet and me were best friends for the first few days I was here.

It's one of the things I love most about being an author - seeing the different covers from each country.

Everything has been something before.

Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check.

Small things may be important to us; to be a sometime anything is sometimes something.

Lou knew that joy unshared was a halved emotion, just as sadness and loss, when borne alone, were often doubled.

Everybody has friends they dislike; people who they have slipped into relationships with, people they would not have chosen had they been more cautious, more circumspect.

Dogs are in on our human silliness; lions are not.

Oh I love gadgets and I pride myself on keeping at the cutting edge of technology.

I would certainly never consider myself a Renaissance Man; I'm not fit to look at the dust from the chariot wheels of many of those who have gone before me.

And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.

At night we are all strangers, even to ourselves.

When you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do.