We hold reunions, not for the dead, for there is nothing in all the earth that you and I can do for the dead. They are past our help and past our praise. We can add to them no glory, we can give to them no immortality. They do not need us, but forever and forever more we need them.
Light itself is a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and abuses that are grown in darkness disappear, like owls and bats, before the light of day.
Wherever a ship ploughs the sea, or a plough furrows the field; wherever a mine yields its treasure; wherever a ship or a railroad train carries freight to market; wherever the smoke of the furnace rises, or the clang of the loom resounds; even in the lonely garret where the seamstress plies her busy needle--there is industry.
In the long, fierce struggle for freedom of opinion, the press, like the Church, counted its martyrs by thousands.
But for we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare... are to be found portrayed in it.
..remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship.
I must do something to keep my thoughts fresh and growing. I dread nothing so much as falling into a rut and feeling myself becoming a fossil.
Heroes did not make our liberties; they but reflected and illustrated them.
[Science] is the literature of God written on the stars-the trees-the rocks-and more important because [of] its marked utilitarian character.
Talleyrand once said to the first Napoleon that the United States is a giant without bones. Since that time our gristle has been rapidly hardening.
I admitted, that the world had existed millions of years. I am astonished at the ignorance of the masses on these subjects. Hugh Miller has it right when he says that 'the battle of evidences must now be fought on the field of the natural sciences.'
You and I are now nearly in middle age, and have not yet become soured and shrivelled with the wear and tear of life. Let us pray to be delivered from that condition where life and nature have no fresh, sweet sensations for us.
There are some things I am afraid of: I am afraid to do a mean thing.
Ideas control the world.
God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!
There are times in the history of men and nations, when they stand so near the vale that separates mortals from the immortals, time from eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost hear the beatings, and feel the pulsations of the heart of the Infinite.
A nation is not worthy to be saved if, in the hour of its fate, it will not gather up all its jewels of manhood and life, and go down into the conflict however bloody and doubtful, resolved on measureless ruin or complete success.
For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all.
Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool.
My God! What is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it?
The separation of Church and State in everything relating to taxation should be absolute.
Power exhibits itself under two distinct forms,--strength and force,--each possessing peculiar qualities, and each perfect in its own sphere. Strength is typified by the oak, the rock, the mountain. Force embodies itself in the cataract, the tempest, and the thunder-bolt.
At present, the most valuable gift which can be bestowed upon women is something to do which they can do well and worthily, and thereby maintain themselves.
[It is possible] that the race of red men ... will, before many generations, be remembered only as a strange, weird, dream-like specter, which has passed once before the eyes of men, but had departed forever.
A noble life crowned with heroic death, rises above and outlives the pride and pomp and glory of the mightiest empire of the earth.
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