17th-century Politician Quotes

Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.

A lover forsaken
A new love may get,
But a neck when once broken
Can never be set.

I storm and I roar, and I fall in a rage,
And missing my whore, I bugger my page.

If we beat the King ninety-nine times, yet he is king still and so will his posterity be after him; but if the king beat us once we shall all be hanged, and our posterity made slaves.

Edward Montagu
Edward Montagu
To Henry Fox, Lord Holland, when encountering him in the Library:
You can read. It is a great happiness. I totally neglected it while I was in business, which has been the whole of my life, and to such a degree that I cannot now read a page—a warning to all Ministers.

Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole
It is extremely natural for us to see... our Thoughts put into the Dress of Words, without which indeed we can scarce have a clear and distinct Idea of them our selves.

Eustace Budgell
Eustace Budgell
Infernal Gods, who rule the Shades below,
Chaos and Phlegethon, ye Realms of Woe,
Grant what I've heard I may to light expose,
Secrets which Earth, and Night, and Hell inclose.

I must needs say my judgement was for the Parliament, as the King's, and Kingdom's, great and safest Council.

Thomas Fairfax
Thomas Fairfax
The world is made up, for the most part, of fools and knaves, both irreconcilable foes to truth.

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
Let not one look of Fortune cast you down; she were not Fortune if she did not frown.

Earthquakes are too evident Demonstrations of the Hollowness of the Earth, being the dreadful Effects or Consequences of it; for if the Body of the Earth was sound and compact, there would be no such thing in Nature as an Earthquake.

When I asked him [Newton] how this earth could have been repeopled if ever it had undergone the same it was threatened with hereafter by the comet of 1680? He answered, that required the power of a Creator.