Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Quotes

It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature’s God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.

A long novitiate of acquaintance should precede the vows of friendship.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us!

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 ever imposed on mankind for their good.

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.

The fire of my adversity has purged the mass of my acquaintance.

The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labor on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out.

To converse with historians is to keep good company; many of them were excellent men, and those who were not, have taken care to appear such in their writings.

Faction is to party what the superlative is to the positive. Party is a political evil, and faction is the worst of all parties.

History is philosophy teaching by example and also by warning.

Worry is the only insupportable misfortune of life.