| Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Games lubricate the body and the mind. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Garlic makes a man wink, drink, and stink.
— The Unfortunate Traveller, 1594 | — Thomas Nashe |
| Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.
— All nature is but art unknown to thee.
| — Alexander Pope |
| Genius is patience. | — Isaac Newton |
| Genius is sorrow's child. | — John Adams |
| Genius without education is like silver in the mine. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Gentle dullness ever loves a joke. | — Alexander Pope |
| Gentlemen have talked a great deal of patriotism. A venerable word, when duly practiced. | — Robert Walpole |
| Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.
— Upon fumbling for his glasses before delivering the Newburgh Address, March 15, 1783 | — George Washington |
| Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights. | — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |
| Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; if not, by any means get wealth and place. | — Alexander Pope |
| Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all. | — John Greenleaf Whittier |
| Give immediate instruction to all your posts in said territory, under your direction, at no time and on no pretence to hoist, or suffer be hoisted, the English flag. | — Zebulon Pike |
| Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth. | — John Wesley |
| Give my love to Arthur, tell him I thank him for his letter and hope his mind will be something eased when he finds this Country awake to their rights as Men, and the descendants of Englishmen. — to William Lee, his brother, July 3, 1774 | — Francis Lightfoot Lee |
| Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you... From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death.
— Letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Go where you will, if a shilling can there be procured, you may expect to meet with individuals in search of it. | — John James Audubon |
| Go, go to your business, I say, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure, business. — Sir Jaspar Fidget, in The Country Wife, act 2 (1675) | — William Wycherley |
| God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures. | — Francis Bacon |
| God created woman to tame man. | — Voltaire |
| God does nothing except in response to believing prayer. | — John Wesley |
| God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it. | — Daniel Webster |
| God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires. | — Francis Bacon |
| God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave. | — Francis Bacon |
| God helps them that help themselves — Poor Richard's Almanack | — Benjamin Franklin |
| God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. | — Voltaire |
| God knows I detest slavery but it is an existing evil, and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution. | — Millard Fillmore |
| God made me and broke the mold. | — Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
| God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer, an honest man. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| God's finger touched him, and he slept. | — Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
| God's first creature, which was light. | — Francis Bacon |
| Good Christian people, I have come here to die, according to the law, and according to the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will say nothing against it. | — Anne Boleyn |
| Good Christian People, I have not come here to preach a sermon; I have come here to die.
— Before her execution, May 19th, 1536 | — Anne Boleyn |
| Good constitutions are formed upon a comparison of the liberty of the individual with the strength of government: If the tone of either be too high, the other will be weakened too much. It is the happiest possible mode of conciliating these objects, to institute one branch peculiarly endowed with sensibility, another with knowledge and firmness. Through the opposition and mutual control of these bodies, the government will reach, in its regular operations, the perfect balance between liberty and power.
— Speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 25, 1788 | — Alexander Hamilton |
| Good deeds in this life are coals raked up in embers, to make a fire next day. | — Thomas Overbury |
| Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again. | — Francis Bacon |
| Good fellowship and friendship are lasting, rational and manly pleasures. — Horner, in The Country Wife, act 1 | — William Wycherley |
| Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society. | — William Makepeace Thackeray |
| Good results are sometimes owing to a failure of judgment, because the faculty of judgment often hinders us from undertaking many things which would succeed if carried through without thinking. | — Madeleine de Souvre |
| Good servants frequently make good masters. | — Jupiter Hammon |
| Goodness is the only investment that never fails. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.
— Federalist No. 15, 1787 | — Alexander Hamilton |
| Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people. | — Henry Clay |
| Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.
— Thoughts on Government, 1776 | — John Adams |
| Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.
— Essay on Property, March 29, 1792 | — James Madison |
| Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. | — George Washington |
| Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. | — Thomas Paine |
| Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind. — Lectures on Law, 1791 | — James Wilson |
| Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it. | — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |
| Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. | — William Penn |
| Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect. | — Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
| Great books, like large skulls, have often the least brains. | — William Benton Clulow |
| Great is he, who overcomes the terrifying; Man is greater than his fate. | — Friedrich Schiller |
| Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. | — John Adams |
| Great men show politeness in a particular way; a smile suffices to assure you that you are welcome, and keep about their avocations as if you were a member of the family. | — John James Audubon |
| Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aidthem to judge for themselves. | — William Ellery |
| Grief walks upon the heels of pleasure; married in haste, we repent at leisure. | — William Congreve |
| Grievances cannot be redressed unless they are known; and they cannot be known but through complaints and petitions. if these are deemed affronts, and the messengers punished as offenders, who will henceforth send petitions? And who will deliver them?
— Letter to Thomas Cushing (15 Feb. 1774) | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. — Farewell Address, September 19, 1796 | — George Washington |
| Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined. — speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778 | — Patrick Henry |
| Guard your roving thoughts with a jealous care, for speech is but the dealer of thoughts, and every fool can plainly read in your words what is the hour of your thoughts. | — Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
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A collection of notable quotations from a variety of Early Modern Era individuals. See the Guide for more details.
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