“The soul aspiring pants its source to mount,As streams meander level with their fount.”
Source: The Omnipresence of the Deity: With Other Poems
“Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a piece of it; they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it.”
Source: Back-log studies and My summer in a garden
“Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth.”
“The aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian domeOutlives in fame the pious fool that rais'd it.”
“Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy.”
Source: Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion
“But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes?”
Source: The Theological Works of Thomas Paine
“The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.”
Source: The Rights of Man: With a Brief Historical Preface
“It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Reuolution. By Thomas Paine ... Part 1. [-second!: Rights of man; part the second. Combining principle and practice. By Thomas Paine ..
“The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they are of course advantageous, but if they require an apology, the apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself?”
Source: The Works of Thomas Paine: A Hero in the American Revolution. With an Account of His Life ...
“Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off.”
Source: THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…