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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus… — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
The fire of my adversity has purged the mass of my acquaintance. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
There is so much trouble in coming into the world, and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that… — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
Cunning pays no regard to virtue, and is but the low mimic of reason. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
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… — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share
As well as might we say that a ship is built, loaded and manned for the sake of any particular pilot, instead of acknowledging… — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
History is philosophy teaching by example and also by warning. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature… — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking… — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
What Anacharsis said of the vine may aptly enough be said of prosperity. She bears the three grapes of drunkenness, pleasure, and sorrow; and… — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
Lawyers must pry into the recesses of the human heart, and become well acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover the… — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
