William Cobbett Quotes

You never know what you can do till you try.

It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world.

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

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.

Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.

Never esteem men on account of their riches or their station. Respect goodness, find it where you may.

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.

The power which money gives is that of brute force; it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet.

I defy you to agitate any fellow with a full stomach.

Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted.

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.

Praise the child, and you make love to the mother.

A full belly to the labourer was, in my opinion, the foundation of public morals and the only source of real public peace.

It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.

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.

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.

The smallness of our desires may contribute reasonably to our wealth.

Norwich is a very fine city, and the castle, which stands in the middle of it, on a hill, is truly majestic.

To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.

Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives.

Give me, Lord, neither poverty nor riches.

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.

Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins, and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body.

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"?

The tendency of taxation is, to create a class of persons, who do not labour: to take from those who do labour the produce of that labour, and to give it to those who do not labour.

Learning consists of ideas, and not of the noise that is made by the mouth.

However roguish a man may be, he always loves to deal with an honest man.

He who writes badly thinks badly

Please your eye and plague your heart.

Without bread all is misery.

But I do not remember ever having seen a newspaper in the house; and, most certainly, that privation did not render us less industrious, happy, or free.

All Middlesex is ugly, notwithstanding the millions upon millionswhichit iscontinuallysucking up fromtherestof the kingdom.

DEAL is a most villainous place. It is full of filthy-looking people.Great desolationof abomination has beengoing on here.

WESTBURY, a nasty odious rotten-borough, a really rotten place.

Protestations of impartiality I shall make none. Theyare always useless and are besides perfect nonsense, when used bya news-monger.

Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought poor.