A little neglect may breed mischief: for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost.
Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
Letter to M. Leroy, 1789.
Note 1. This sentence was much used in the Revolutionary period. It occurs even so early as November, 1755, in an answer by the Assembly of Pennsylvania to the Governor, and forms the motto of Franklins Historical Review, 1759, appearing also in the body of the work.Frothingham: Rise of the Republic of the United States, p. 413. [back]
My hour is eight oclock, though it is an infallible rule, Sanat, sanctificat, et ditat, surgere mane (That he may be healthy, happy, and wise, let him rise early).A Health to the Gentle Profession of Serving-men, 1598 (reprinted in Roxburghe Library), p. 121. [back]
Note 7. Byrons European fame is the best earnest of his immortality, for a foreign nation is a kind of contemporaneous posterity.Horace Binny Wallace: Stanley, or the Recollections of a Man of the World, vol. ii. p. 89. [back]
Note 8. Snug as a bug in a rug.The Stratford Jubilee, ii. 1, 1779. [back]
Note 9. It hath been said that an unjust peace is to be preferred before a just war.Samuel Butler: Speeches in the Rump Parliament. Butlers Remains. [back]