George Bancroft Quotes

#1. After acquiring Texas, Polk deliberately started a war with Mexico because, as he later told the historian George Bancroft, we had to acquire California. Thanks to Polk, we did.

Gore Vidal

#2. Art can make chaos seductive.

Mason Cooley

#3. The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred.

George Bancroft

#4. Dishonesty is so grasping it would deceive God himself, were it possible.

George Bancroft

#5. The best government rests on the people, and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority.

George Bancroft

#6. By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.

George Bancroft

#7. The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

George Bancroft

#8. Libraries collect the works of genius of every language and every age.

George Bancroft

#9. I was never really a model. That somehow is in my bio. The whole thing is I was tall since I was a child - you're either a model or you play basketball.

Jules Asner

#10. Many a small man is considered good while he remains small, but let power come to him, and he becomes a raging fury.

Louis L'Amour

#11. Style is the gossamer on which the seeds of truth float through the world.

George Bancroft

#12. The measure of progress of civilization is the progress of the people.

George Bancroft

#13. Not in vain has Lincoln lived, for he has helped to make this republic an example of justice, with no caste but the caste of humanity.

George Bancroft

#14. Sometimes you just have to let people escape with their good intentions intact.

Claudio Sanchez

#15. I'm really glad I'm not on Twitter. Because I'd have to be answering things that I didn't really know anything about, and I'd rather just wait for the dust to settle and then say something.

Stewart Lee

#16. Sedition is bred in the lap of luxury and its chosen emissaries are the beggared spendthrift and the impoverished libertine.

George Bancroft

#17. If hours did not hang heavy, what would become of scandal?

George Bancroft

#18. There is no drunkenness equal to that of remembering whispered words in the night.

Thornton Wilder

#19. The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.

George Bancroft

#20. In nine times out of ten, the slanderous tongue belongs to a disappointed person.

George Bancroft

#21. In 1688 England contracted to the Netherlands the highest debt that one nation can owe to another. Herself not knowing how to recover her liberties, they were restored by men of the United Provinces.

George Bancroft

#22. The charities of life are scattered everywhere, enameling the vales of human beings as the flowers paint the meadows. They are not the fruit of study, nor the privilege of refinement, but a natural instinct.

George Bancroft

#23. Thorns pricked at her skin everywhere, poked at her face

Christina Henry

#24. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break.

George Bancroft

#25. Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement.

George Bancroft

#26. Avarice is the vice of declining years.

George Bancroft

#27. And most importantly, my dearest Jemma, I want you to remember the good times for those are what will keep you alive when all else is lost.

Katlyn Charlesworth

#28. It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.

George Bancroft

#29. Institutions may crumble and governments fall, but it is only that they may renew a better youth, and mount upwards like the eagle.

George Bancroft

#30. Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.

George Bancroft

#31. The public is wiser than the wisest critic.

George Bancroft

#32. To truly redefine success we need to redefine our relationship with death.

Arianna Huffington

#33. There's an old saying that when it gets tough the tough get going. You have to work your way through these things.

Ed Belfour

#34. Much is written of the power of the Press, a power which may last but a day; by comparison little is heard of the power of books, which may endure for generations.

Stanley Unwin

#35. The trouble is, being an actor, you're always being sent scripts, so you've always got something to read. You've always got about three scripts to read, that you have to read, all the time. So finding a book or getting into a book series is hard, especially for me.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster

#36. Master, Master Poet, Master of our silent desires,
The heart of the world quivers with the throbbing of your heart,
But it burns not with your song.

Khalil

#37. Ennui is the desire of activity without the fit means of gratifying the desire.

George Bancroft

#38. Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.

George Bancroft

#39. Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect.

George Bancroft

#40. ... the unimaginable age of the mountains and the fine mesh of living things that lay across them would remind him that he was part of this order and insignificant within it, and he would be set free.

Ian McEwan

#41. If reason is a universal faculty, the decision of the common mind is the nearest criterion of truth.

George Bancroft

#42. I find the name of Jesus Christ written on the top of every page of modern history.

George Bancroft