Quotes from Smith’s Writings

Judgments

Vincere est vivere [To win is to live]. True Travels, (motto from Smith’s coat of arms) 

Seeing honor is our lives’ ambition … (A Description of New England, p. 61)

[The Romans] by their pains and virtues became lords of the world. They by their ease and vices became slaves to their servants. (A Description of New England, p. 32)

These observations are all I have for the expenses of a thousand pound and the loss of eighteen years of time besides all the travels, dangers, miseries, and encumbrances for my country’s good. (The Generall Historie prospectus)

The Spaniard never more greedily desired gold than he victual, nor his soldiers more to abandon the country than he to keep it. (The Generall Historie, 3, p. 46)

By this time they were become so perfect on all sides … as there was ten times more care to maintain their damnable and private trade than to provide for the colony things that were necessary. (The Generall Historie, 3, p. 69/70)

For in over-toiling our weak and unskillful bodies to satisfy this desire of [the London Company for]  present profit, we can scarce ever recover ourselves from one supply to another. (The Generall Historie, 3, p. 72)

I confess I am somewhat too bold to censure other men’s actions being not present, but they have done as much of me. (The Generall Historie, 4, p. 150)

The cause of the massacre was the want of martial discipline…  [The Indians] have all the English had by destroying those they found so carelessly secure… The remedy is to send soldiers… The multiplicity of opinions here and officers there makes such delays by questions and formality that as much time is spent in compliment as in action. (The Generall Historie, 4, p. 165)

For there is no country to pillage as the Romans found. All you expect from thence must be by labor…  

Three hundred good soldiers and laborers [would be] better than all the rest that go only to get the fruits of other men’s labors by the title of an office. Thus they spend Michaelmas rent in midsummer moon, and would gather their harvest before they have planted their corn. (The Generall Historie, 4, p. 167)

In regard to provisioning a ship: Some it may be will say I would have men rather to feast than fight, but I say the want of those necessaries occasions the loss of more men than in any English fleet hath been slain since 88. (A Sea Grammar, p. 85)

But alas, what is it when the power of majesty pampered in all delights of pleasant vanity, neither knowing nor considering the labor of the plowman, the hazard of the merchant, the oppression of the statesmen, nor feeling the piercing torments of broken limbs and inveterated wounds, the toilsome marches, the bad lodging, the hungry diet, and the extreme misery of that [which] soldiers endure to secure all those estates, and yet by the spite of malicious detractions starves for want of their reward and recompenses—? whilest the politic courtier … (True Travels, p. 18)

I hope my true meaning wise men will excuse, for making my opinion plain. I have been so often and by so many honest men entreated [so that] for the rest, the more they mislike it the better I like it myself. (Advertisements, p. 35)

Truly there is no pleasure comparable to a generous spirit as good employment in noble actions, especially amongst Turks, heathens, and infidels, to see daily new countries, people, fashions, governments, stratagems, relieve the oppressed, comfort his friends, pass miseries, subdue enemies, adventure upon any feasible danger for God and his country. It is true it is a happy thing to be born to strength, wealth, and honor, but that which is got by prowess and magnanimity is the truest lustre. (Advertisements, p. 37)

Harsh conclusions have so oft plundered me in those perplexed actions that if I could not freely express myself to them [who] doth second them, I should think myself guilty of a most damnable crime worse than ingratitude. However, some overweaning capricious conceits may attribute it to vainglory, ambition, or what other idle epithet such [are] pleased to bestow on me, but such trash I so much scorn that I presume further to advise those less advised than myself … (Advertisements, p. 37)

I am ready to live and die among you upon conditions suiting my calling and profession to make good, and Virginia and New England my heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns. (Advertisements, p. 38)

What sport doth yield a more pleasing content and less hurt and charge than angling with a hook and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle over the silent streams of a calm sea? (The Generall Historie, 5, p. 220, New England, p. 39) 

Thus from the clamors and the ignorance of false informers are sprung those disasters that sprung in Virginia, and our ingenious verbalists were no less plague to us in Virginia than the locusts of the Egyptians. For the labor of twenty or thirty of the best only preserved … the idle livers of near two hundred of the rest. (The Generall Historie, 2, p. 39)

The misery of a pirate … I could wish merchants, gentlemen, and all setters forth ships not to be sparing of a competent pay nor true payment, for neither soldiers nor seamen can live without means but necessity will force them to steal, and when they are once entered into that trade, they are hardly reclaimed. (True Travels, p. 60)