| Habit is Heaven's own redress: it takes the place of happiness. | — Alexander Pushkin |
| Habituated from our Infancy to trample upon the Rights of Human Nature, every generous, every liberal Sentiment, if not extinguished, is enfeebled in our Minds. | — George Mason |
| Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.
— Federalist No. 55, February 15, 1788 | — James Madison |
| Half a truth is often a great lie. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society.
— Federalist No. 14, November 20, 1787 | — James Madison |
| Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected. | — George Washington |
| Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it. | — Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. | — Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it. | — Gustave Flaubert |
| Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution. | — Gustave Flaubert |
| Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion. | — Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
| Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground. | — Alexander Pope |
| Happy, thrice happy shall they be pronounced hereafter, who have contributed any thing, who have performed the meanest office in erecting this stupendous fabrick of Freedom and Empire on the broad basis of Independency; who have assisted in protecting the rights of humane nature and establishing an Asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions. — General Orders, April 18, 1783 | — George Washington |
| Harmony in the married state is the very first object to be aimed at
— Letter to Mary Jefferson Eppes, January 7, 1798 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations, are recommended by policy, humanity and interest. But even our Commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with Powers so disposed; in order to give trade a stable course.
— Farewell Address, September 19, 1796 | — George Washington |
| Has God forgotten all I have done for Him. | — Louis XIV |
| Have I given any symptoms of an avaricious disposition? Have I obtained any grants from the crown since I have been placed at the head of the treasury? Has my conduct been different from that which others in the same station would have followed? | — Robert Walpole |
| Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life. — Address to Congress on Resigning his Commission, December 23, 1783 | — George Washington |
| Having proceeded to this length, for which they are now ripe, we shall have a formidable rebellion against reason, the principle of all government, and against the very name of liberty. | — Henry Knox |
| He certainly over-heated himself at Venice by walking at a season when it is said that only Dogs and Englishmen are seen out of doors at noon, all else lie down in the middle of the day. — Music, Men and Manners in France and Italy, 1770 (1969) p. 94. | — Charles Burney |
| He does not possess wealth; it possesses him. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| He hath learning enough that has learned to drink to his first man.
— The Unfortunate Traveller, 1594
| — Thomas Nashe |
| He is a great simpleton who imagines that the chief power of wealth is to supply wants. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it creates more wants than it supplies. | — William Wirt |
| He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas. | — John Ruskin |
| He makes no friends who never made a foe. | — Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
| He that can have patience can have what he will. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that contemns a shrew to the degree of not descending to words with her does worse than beat her. | — Roger L'Estrange |
| He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that does good for good's sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end. | — William Penn |
| He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals. — Poor Richard's Almanack | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other. | — Francis Bacon |
| He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that hath knowledge spareth his words. | — Francis Bacon |
| He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. | — Francis Bacon |
| He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that lives upon hope will die fasting. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith, than George the Third. | — Thomas Paine |
| He that rises late must trot all day. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that serves God for money will serve the Devil for better wages. | — Roger L'Estrange |
| He that speaks much, is much mistaken. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that upon a true principle lives, without any disquiet of thought, may be said to be happy.
— “Fables of Æsop and other eminent mythologists: with morals and reflections”, p.147 (1714) | — Roger L'Estrange |
| He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator. | — Francis Bacon |
| He that will not work shall not eat. — Warning used in 1607 to motivate his men at Jamestown, Virginia. | — John Smith |
| He that won't be counseled can't be helped. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that would live clear of envy must lay his finger on his mouth, and keep his hand out of the ink-pot. | — Roger L'Estrange |
| He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. — Dissertation on First Principles of Government, December 23, 1791 | — Thomas Paine |
| He that's secure is not safe. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He was a man, he always performed his promises. | — Zebulon Pike |
| He was certainly one of the most learned men of the age. It may be said of him as has been said of others that he was a "walking Library," and what can be said of but few such prodigies, that the Genius of Philosophy ever walked hand in hand with him.
— On Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Harrison Smith, November 4, 1826 | — James Madison |
| He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views. | — William Congreve |
| He who dares not offend cannot be honest. | — Thomas Paine |
| He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force.
— January 26, 1788 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father's wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father's care. | — William Penn |
| He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death. | — Thomas Paine |
| He who is void of virtuous Attachments in private Life, is, or very soon will be void of all Regard for his Country. There is seldom an Instance of a Man guilty of betraying his Country, who had not before lost the Feeling of moral Obligations in his private Connections.
— Letter to James Warren, November 4, 1775 | — Samuel Adams |
| He who knows best knows how little he knows. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all. Our forefathers threw off the yoke of Popery in religion; for you is reserved the honor of leveling the popery of politics. They opened the Bible to all, and maintained the capacity of every man to judge for himself in religion.
— Speech at the State House, Philadelphia, August 1, 1776 | — Samuel Adams |
| He who rides to be crowned will not mind a rainy day. | — John Trapp |
| He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread. | — Daniel Webster |
| He who uses trickery should at least make use of his judgment to learn that he can scarcely hide treacherous conduct for very long among clever men who are determined to find him out, although they may pretend to be deceived in order to disguise their knowledge of his deceitfulness. | — Madeleine de Souvre |
| He will bring us all, rich and poor, white and black, to his judgment seat. | — Jupiter Hammon |
| He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred right of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.
— Deleted portion of a draft of the Declaration of Independence, June, 1776 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| He's a fool that makes his doctor his heir.
— Poor Richard's Almanack | — Benjamin Franklin |
| He's a fool that marries, but he's a greater that does not marry a fool; what is wit in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold? — Pinchwife, in The Country Wife, act 1 | — William Wycherley |
| Health consists with temperance alone. | — Alexander Pope |
| Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. | — William Congreve |
| Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| Heaven knows that I have done all that a mortal could do, to save the people, and the failure was not my fault, but the fault of others. | — Davy Crockett |
| Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there. | — Andrew Jackson |
| Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are. — She Is Not Fair | — Hartley Coleridge |
| Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal. | — Thomas Moore |
| Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.
— Poor Richard's Almanack | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell. | — John Adams |
| Here sir, the people govern. — Speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 17, 1788 | — Alexander Hamilton |
| Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards. | — Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
| Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade? | — Benjamin Franklin |
| His Example is now complete, and it will teach wisdom and virtue to magistrates, citizens, and men, not only in the present age, but in future generations, as long as our history shall be read.
— Message to the U.S. Senate, December 19, 1799 | — John Adams |
| His temper was excellent, and he generally observed decorum in debate. On one or two occasions I have seen him angry, and his anger was terrible; those who witnessed it, were not disposed to rouse it again.
— on Patrick Henry, December, 1824 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends. | — Alexander Pope |
| History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened.
— Emblematical Representations, Circa 1774 | — Benjamin Franklin |
| History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Honesty is the best policy. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies. | — Alexander Pope |
| Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we ba...sely entail hereditary bondage upon them. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. | — Francis Bacon |
| Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, 'It will be happier.' | — Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
| Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die. | — Alexander Pope |
| Hops are a wicked and pernicious weed. | — Henry VIII |
| Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity. | — Francis Bacon |
| How can any man be weak who dares to be at all? | — Henry David Thoreau |
| How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?
— Federalist No. 41, January 1788 | — James Madison |
| How could I make a little book, when I have seen enough to make a dozen large books? | — John James Audubon |
| How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? | — Henry David Thoreau |
| How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| How happy is the blameless vestal's lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot. | — Alexander Pope |
| How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems. | — Daniel Webster |
| How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long? | — Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
| How many observe Christ's birth-day! How few, his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments.
— Poor Richard's Almanack | — Benjamin Franklin |
| How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| How much more do they deserve our reverence and praise, whose lives are devoted to the formation of institutions, which, when they and their children are mingled in the common dust, may continue to cherish the principles and the practice of liberty in perpetual freshness and vigour. — Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833 | — Joseph Story |
| How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism. — speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 10, 1788 | — James Monroe |
| How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise! | — Alexander Pope |
| How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence? | — Alexander Pope |
| How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
— Letter to John Pitts, January 21, 1776 | — Samuel Adams |
| How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once. | — Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
| However mean your life is, meet it and live it. | — Henry David Thoreau |
| However weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties. .
— Report on a National Bank, December 13, 1790 | — Alexander Hamilton |
| Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Human government is more or less perfect as it approaches nearer or diverges farther from the imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government.
— Draft of a Newspaper Communication, Circa August 1770 | — John Adams |
| Human nature is not of itself vicious. | — Thomas Paine |
| Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"... If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?
— The Novanglus, 1775 | — John Adams |
| Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars. | — Gustave Flaubert |
| Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot. | — Thomas Moore |
| Hunger is the best pickle. | — Benjamin Franklin |
| Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment. Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them. | — John James Audubon |
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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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