~Quotes~

"When the fire is beginning to kindle, and your heart growing warm, propound these questions to it. Who is the invader? Have I competent knowledge of him? Is he a man of good character? A man of sense? For be assured a sensible woman can never be happy with a fool. What has been his walk in life? Is he a gambler? a spendthrift, a drunkard? Is his fortune sufficient to maintain me in the manner I have been accustomed to live, and my sisters do live? and is he one to whom my friends can have no reasonable objection? If these interrogations can be satisfactorily answered there will remain but one more to be asked; that however is an important one. Have I sufficient ground to conclude that his affections are enjoyed by me? Without this, the heart of sensibility will struggle against a passion that is not reciprocated; delicacy, custom, or call it by what epithet you will having precluded all advances on your part, the declaration without the most indirect invitation on yours must proceed from the man to render it permanent & valuable. And nothing short of good sense, and an easy unaffected conduct can draw the line between prudery & coquetry; both of which are equally despised by men of understanding; and soon or late, will recoil upon the actor." ~ George Washington, Letter to Eleanor "Nelly" Parke Custis, Martha Washington's granddaughter

"“Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, the Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That He ought to be worshipped."-Benjamin Franklin

"I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet through all the gloom I see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth all the means. This is our day of deliverance. '-John Adams

"Be courageous. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has emerged from these stronger and more prosperous. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!"-Thomas A. Edison

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."-Mark Twain

"When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on." -Thomas Jefferson

"Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul" (1 Pet. 2:11)

"Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man."—Proverbs 3:3-4

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." -Thomas Jefferson

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior..."—Isaiah 43:2-3

"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto". -Thomas Jefferson

"Let us go, while we are in our prime / And take the harmless folly of the time."-Robert Herrick from Hesperides

"The man who reads nothing at all is better than educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."-Thomas Jefferson

"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it."-Patrick Henry

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people." -G. K. Chesterton

"Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn’t any. But this wrongs the jackass."- Mark Twain

"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." Patrick Henry

"Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute."- John Adams

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."-G. K. Chesterton

"What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!"—Romans 7:24-25

“THERE are no wise few; for in all men rages the folly of the Fall. Take your strongest, happiest, handsomest, best born, best bred, best instructed men on earth and give them special power for half an hour and because they are men they will begin to [perform] badly …”- G.K. Chesterton

"Your fathers have said that man’s right to liberty is self-evident. There is no need of argument to make it clear. The voices of nature, of conscience, of reason, and of revelation, proclaim it as the right of all rights, the foundation of all trust, and of all responsibility. Man was born with it. It was his before he comprehended it. The deed conveying it to him is written in the center of his soul, and is recorded in Heaven."-Speech on the Dred Scott Decision, Frederick Douglass

"Vainly you talk about voting it down. When you have cast your millions of ballots, you have not reached the evil. It has fastened its root deep into the heart of the nation, and nothing but God’s truth and love can cleanse the land. We must change the moral sentiment."-Frederick Douglass

"Laws against the possession of weapons only disarm those who have no intention of committing a crime." - Cesare Beccaria

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable. – Aldous Huxley

Did I mention that I really like quotes? :)

Reading List:

Ancient History:

Herodotus: "The Histories"

Thucydides: "History of the Peloponnesian War"

Xenophon: "Anabasis and Hellenica"

Polybius: "The Histories"

Julius Caesar: "The Gallic War and The Civil War"

Sallust: "Jugurthine War and The Conspiracy of Catiline"

Livy: "History of Rome"

Quintus Curtius Rufus: "Life of Alexander the Great"

Josephus: "The Jewish Wars" and "Antiquities"

Plutarch: "Parallel Lives"

Suetonius: "Lives of the Caesars"

Tacitus: "Annals" and "Histories"

Justin: "Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus"

Herodian: "History of the Roman Empire"

Aurelius Victor: "History of Rome"

Gibbons: "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"

Philosophy:

Plato:"The Republic"

Cicero: "On Moral Duties", "Tusculan Disputations", "On Ends", (De Finibus) "On the Republic", "On the Laws","On Old Age", "On Friendship", "On Academic Skepticism", "On the Nature of the Gods", "On Fate", "On Divination", "On the Orator", "The Dream of Scipio", "Philippics Against Marc Antony", "Letters", and "Orations"

Plutarch: "Morals"

Xenophon: "Memorobilia of Socrates"

Seneca: "Moral Epistles" and "Essays"

Epictetus: "The Enchiridion"

Pythagoras: "The Golden Verses of Pythagoras"

Marcus Aurelius: "Meditations"

Lucretius: "On the Nature of Things"

John Locke: "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding"

Henry Home, Lord Kames: "Principles of Natural Religion"

David Hume: "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion"

Voltaire: "Candide" and "Letters on the English"

Claude Adrien Helvétius: "De l'esprit" (On Mind)

Conyers Middleton: "Introductory Discourse and the Free Inquiry"

Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke: "Philosophical Works"

James Beattie: "Religious and philosophical works"

(Related subjects)

Literature:

"Homer"

"The Iliad"

"The Odyssey"

Virgil: "The Aeneid"

John Milton: "Paradise Lost" and "Areopagitica"

Sophocles: "Antigone", "Oedipus the King", "Oedipus at Colonus" (Oedipus trilogy),(Ajax, Trachinian Women, Philoctetes, Electra)

Aeschylus: "Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides" (Orestian Trilogy ) and "The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliants, Prometheus Bound"

Euripides: "The Trojan Women, The Bacchae, Medea, Iphigenia in Tauris", "Alcestis, Heracleidae, Hippolytus, Andromache, Hecuba, The Suppliants, Electra", and "Heracles, Ion, Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes, Iphigenia at Aulis, Rhesus"

Demosthenes: "The Philippics"

Isocrates: "Against the Sophists","Areopagiticus", and "On the Peace"

Terence: Plays

Horace: Poems

Edward Young:"Night Thoughts"

Theocritus: Poems

Anacreon: Poems

Joseph Addison: "Cato"

Moliere: "The Misanthrope" and "Tartuffe the Hypocrite"

Metastasio: "The Works of Metastasio"

Jonathan Swift: "Gulliver's Travels","A Modest Proposal", "A Tale of a Tub" , and "The Drapier's Letters"

Alexander Pope: "Essay on Man", "Moral Essays", and "The Dunciad"

'Ossian':The Poetical Works of Ossian

American History:

William Robertson: "The History of America"

William Douglass: "History of the British Settlements in North America"

Thomas Hutchison:"The History of Massachusetts"

William Smith: "History of New York"

Samuel Smith: "History of New Jersey"

Benjamin Franklin: "Historical Review of Pennsylvania"

Captain John Smith: "A History of the Settlement of Virginia"

William Stith: "History of Virginia"

Sir William Keith:"History of the British Plantations in America"

Robert Beverly: "History and Present State of Virginia"