WIST

Better be cheated in the price than in the quality of goods.

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish writer.
The Art of Worldly Wisdom, #157 (1647) [tr. Jacobs (1943)]

To have doubted one’s own first principles is the work of a civilized man.

Alfred Adler (1870-1937) Austrian psychologist
“Ideals and Doubts,” Illinois Law Review (May 1915)

Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except upon the side of mercy.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer and orator
“Abraham Lincoln,” Lecture (1894)

Full text.

Ingersoll used the final phrase here frequently about Lincoln, e.g., in The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child, an 1877 lecture, he wrote: "Abraham Lincoln was, in my judgment, in many respects, the grandest man ever president of the United States. Upon his monument these words should be written: 'Here sleeps the only man in the history of the world, who, having been clothed with almost absolute power, never abused it, exceupt on the side of mercy.'"

The phrase "But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power" is often attributed, without citation, to Lincoln.

The lion and the lamb may, possibly, sumtime lay down in this world together for a fu minnits, but when the lion kums tew git up, the lamb will be missing.

[The lion and the lamb may, possibly, sometime lay own in this world together for a few minutes, but when the lion comes to get up, the lamb will be missing.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Affurisms: Slips of the Pen The Complete Works of Josh Billings (1876)
Full text.

A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.

Henry James (1843-1916) American writer
“Robert Louis Stevenson,” Century Magazine (April 1888)