“Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“A thorough-paced knave will rarely quarrel with one whom he can cheat: his revenge is plunder; therefore he is usually the most forgiving of beings, upon the principle that if he come to an open rupture, he must defend himself; and this does not suit a man whose vocation it is to keep his hands in the pocket of another.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool; since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise. The light of intellect has put out the fire of persecution, as other fires are observed to smoulder before the light of the same.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The end of labor is to gain leisure.”
“That alliance may be said to have a double tie, where the minds are united as well as the body; and the union will have all its strength when both the links are in perfection together.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.”
Source: L.P.
“It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Neutrality is no favorite with Providence, for we are so formed that it is scarcely possible for us to stand neuter in our hearts, although we may deem it prudent to appear so in our actions”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
