Order and system are nobler things than power. [ Ruskin ]

Grasp the whole worlds of reason, lip and sense,
In one close system of benevolence. [ Pope ]

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles. [ Hume ]

There is often more true spiritual force in a proverb than in a philosophical system. [ Carlyle ]

The uncertainty of death is, in effect, the great support of the whole system of life. [ Johnson ]

The two best rules for a system of rhetoric are: first, have something to say; and next, say it. [ George Emmons ]

The uniformity which history exhibits in the conduct of man in all ages and climes, is alone compatible with the system of necessity. [ Sir T. C. Morgan ]

There is a magic in the memory of schoolboy friendships; it softens the heart, and even affects the nervous system of those who have no hearts. [ Beaconsfield ]

Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction. [ Colton ]

A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system of calumny, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principle has taken full effect on this state favorite. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

Called to the throne by the voice of the people, my maxim has always been: A career open to talent without distinction of birth. It is this system of equality for which the European oligarchy detests me. [ Napoleon ]

The best system of education is that which draws its chief support from the voluntary effort of the community, from the individual efforts of citizens, and from those burdens of taxation which they voluntarily impose upon themselves. [ Garfield ]

Without attempting a formal definition of the word, I am inclined to consider rhetoric, when reduced to a system in books, as a body of rules derived from experience and observation, extending to all communications by language, and designed to make it efficient. [ W. E. Channing ]

Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air more than upon his meat and drink: but no one can exist for an hour without a copious supply of air. The atmosphere which some breathe is contaminated and adulterated, and with its vital principles so diminished that it cannot fully decarbonize the blood, nor fully excite the nervous system. [ Thackeray ]

In most old communities there is a commonsense even in sensuality. Vice itself gets gradually digested into a system, is amenable to certain laws of conventional propriety and honor, has for its object simply the gratification of its appetites, and frowns with quite a conservative air on all new inventions, all untried experiments in iniquity. [ Whipple ]

The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but concealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in reference to the proposed result, [ John Mason Good ]

This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder if you all rise to the size of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase, seventieth birthday. The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach--unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]