If a favour is asked of you, grant it if you can. If not, refuse it in such a manner as that one denial may be sufficient. - James Burgh

What may be very entertaining in company with ignorant people may be tiresome to those who know more of the matter.

That government only can be pronounced consistent with the design of all government, which allows to the governed the liberty of doing what, consistently with the general good, they may desire to do, and which only forbids their doing the contrary. Liberty does not exclude restraint; it only excludes unreasonable restraint. To determine precisely how far personal liberty is compatible with the general good, and of the propriety of social conduct in all cases, is a matter of great extent, and demands the united wisdom of a whole people. And the consent of the whole people, as far as it can be obtained, is indispensably necessary to every law, by which the whole people are to be bound; else the whole people are enslaved to the one, or the few, who frame the laws for them.

To offer advice to an angry man, is like blowing against a tempest.