George Bancroft Quotes
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Avarice is the vice of declining years.
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Ennui is the desire of activity without the fit means of gratifying the desire.
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Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.
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The public is wiser than the wisest critic.
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Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect.
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In nine times out of ten, the slanderous tongue belongs to a disappointed person.
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By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.
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If reason is a universal faculty, the decision of the common mind is the nearest criterion of truth.
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Dishonesty is so grasping it would deceive God himself, were it possible.
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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.
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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.
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Institutions may crumble and governments fall, but it is only that they may renew a better youth, and mount upwards like the eagle.
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Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement.
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Sedition is bred in the lap of luxury and its chosen emissaries are the beggared spendthrift and the impoverished libertine.
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The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred.
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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.
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The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.