text:
Thomas Gray

Thomas Gray (December 26, 1716 – July 30, 1771) was an English poet, classical scholar, and professor of history at Cambridge University.

Quotes

Now Autumn bears a cloud brow The flowers of Spring are swept way And Summer fruits desert the bough
 * T'was Spring, t'was Summer, all was gay
 * from Autumn

Thou tamer of the human breast, Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour The bad affright, afflict the best!
 * Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
 * Hymn to Adversity, St. 1 (1742)

And from her own she learned to melt at others' woe.
 * What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,
 * Hymn to Adversity, St. 2 (1742)

High he rears his ruby crest. There the thundering strokes begin, There the press and there the din; Talymalfra's rocky shore Echoing to the battle's roar.
 * In glittering arms and glory dressed,
 * "The Triumphs of Owen. A Fragment", from Mr. Evans's Specimens of the Welch Poetry (1764)

Thousand banners round him burn. Where he points his purple spear, Hasty, hasty Rout is there, Marking with indignant eye Fear to stop and shame to fly. There Confusion, Terror's child, Conflict fierce and Ruin wild, Agony that pants for breath, Despair and honourable Death.
 * Where his glowing eye−balls turn,
 * "The Triumphs of Owen. A Fragment", from Mr. Evans's Specimens of the Welch Poetry (1764)

Leave me, leave me to repose!
 * Now my weary lips I close;
 * Descent of Odin, Line 71 (1761)

Hurtles in the darkened air.
 * Iron sleet of arrowy shower
 * The Fatal Sisters (1761), line 3

He had not the method of making a fortune.
 * Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune,
 * On His Own Character (1761)

 * I shall be but a shrimp of an author.
 * Letter to Horace Walpole (February 25, 1768)

 * Comus and his midnight crew.
 * Ode for Music (1769), line 2

 * While bright-eyed Science watches round.
 * Ode for Music (1769), Chorus, line 3

The bee's collected treasures sweet, Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet The still small voice of gratitude.
 * Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,
 * Ode for Music (1769), V, line 8

 * And weep the more, because I weep in vain.
 * Sonnet, On the Death of Mr. West; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

And passages that lead to nothing.
 * Rich windows that exclude the light,
 * A Long Story; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * The social smile, the sympathetic tear.
 * Education and Government; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

And gospel-light first dawn'd from Bullen's eyes.
 * When love could teach a monarch to be wise,
 * Education and Government; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * Now as the Paradisiacal pleasures of the Mahometans consist in playing upon the flute and lying with Houris, be mine to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon.
 * To Mr. West, Letter iv, Third Series; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude (1754)
Approaching Comfort view: The hues of bliss more brightly glow Chastised by sabler tints of woe, And blended form, with artful strife, The strength and harmony of life.
 * Behind the steps that Misery treads
 * Line 35

On the thorny bed of pain, At length repair his vigour lost, And breathe and walk again: The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are opening paradise.
 * See the wretch that long has tost
 * Line 41

To sweet repast and calm repose.
 * And hie him home, at evening's close,
 * Line 87

From busy day the peaceful night; Rich, from the very want of wealth, In heaven's best treasures, peace and health.
 * From toil he wins his spirits light,
 * Line 93

The Progress of Poesy (1754)
A thousand rills their mazy progress take.
 * From Helicon's harmonious springs
 * I. 1, Line 3

 * Glance their many-twinkling feet.
 * I. 3, Line 11

The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.
 * O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move
 * I. 3, Line 16

Glory pursue, and gen'rous shame, Th' unconquerable mind, 3 and freedom's holy flame.
 * Her track, where'er the goddess roves,
 * II. 2, Line 10

In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid.
 * Far from the sun and summer-gale,
 * III. 1, Line 1

 * Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.
 * III. 1, Line 12

The living throne, the sapphire-blaze, Where angels tremble, while they gaze, He saw; but blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night.
 * He passed the flaming bounds of place and time:
 * III. 2, Line 4

Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er Scatters from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.
 * Hark, his hands the lyre explore!
 * III. 3, Line 2

Beneath the good how far,—but far above the great.
 * Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,
 * III. 3, Line 16

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (written 1742–1750)
That crown the wat'ry glade.
 * Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,
 * St. 1

Ah, fields beloved in vain! Where once my careless childhood stray'd, A stranger yet to pain! I feel the gales that from ye blow A momentary bliss bestow.
 * Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!
 * St. 2

They hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a fearful joy.
 * Still as they run they look behind,
 * St. 4

Less pleasing when possest; The tear forgot as soon as shed, The sunshine of the breast.
 * Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed,
 * St. 5

The little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond today.
 * Alas, regardless of their doom,
 * St. 6

 * Ah, tell them they are men!
 * St. 6

 * Grim-visaged comfortless Despair.
 * St. 7

Amid severest woe.
 * And moody madness laughing wild
 * St. 8

Condemn'd alike to groan, The tender for another's pain; Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; '''where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.'''
 * To each his suff'rings: all are men,
 * St. 10

On the Death of a Favourite Cat (1747)
Where China's gayest art had dyed The azure flowers, that blow; Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima reclined, Gazed on the lake below.
 * 'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
 * St. 1

What cat's averse to fish?
 * What female heart can gold despise?
 * St. 4

Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard. A favourite has no friend!
 * No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred;
 * St. 6

And heedless hearts, is lawful prize; Nor all that glisters gold.
 * Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
 * St. 7

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (written 1750, publ. 1751)
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
 * The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
 * St. 1

And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.
 * Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
 * St. 2

The moping owl does to the moon complain.
 * Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
 * St. 3

The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
 * Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
 * St. 4

 * The breezy call of incense-breathing morn.
 * St. 5

Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
 * For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
 * St. 6

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor.
 * Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
 * St. 8

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour: The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
 * The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
 * St. 9

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
 * Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
 * St. 10

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
 * Can storied urn, or animated bust
 * St. 11

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
 * Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,
 * St. 12

Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul.
 * But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
 * St. 13

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
 * Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
 * St. 14

The little Tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
 * Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
 * St. 15

The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes.
 * The applause of list'ning senates to command,
 * St. 16

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind.
 * Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
 * St. 17

Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
 * Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
 * St. 19

 * Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
 * St. 20

That teach the rustic moralist to die.
 * And many a holy text around she strews,
 * St. 21

This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind?
 * For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
 * St. 22

E'en in our Ashes live their wonted Fires.
 * E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
 * St. 23

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
 * Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
 * St. 25

Along the heath, and near his fav'rite tree: Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.
 * One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
 * St. 28

A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown. Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth. And Melancholy marked him for her own.
 * Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
 * The Epitaph, St. 1

Heav'n did a recompense as largely send: He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear, He gained from Heav'n ('twas all he wished) a friend.
 * Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
 * The Epitaph, St. 2

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.
 * No farther seek his merits to disclose,
 * The Epitaph, St. 3

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode There they alike in trembling hope repose), The bosom of his Father and his God.
 * No further seek his merits to disclose,
 * The Epitaph

The Bard (1757)

 * The Bard (1757) on Wikisource.

Confusion on thy banners wait, Though fanned by Conquest's crimson wing They mock the air with idle state.
 * Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
 * I. 1. lines 1-4

Nor even thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail To save thy secret soul from nightly fears, From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!'''
 * '''Helm nor hauberk's twisted mail,
 * I, 1. lines 5-8

 * To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay.
 * I. 2. line 28

Dear, as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.
 * Dear, as the light that visits these sad eyes;
 * I. 3. lines 39-40

The winding sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room and verge enough, The Characters of hell to trace.
 * Weave the warp, and weave the woof,
 * II. 1. lines 49-52

While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.
 * Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
 * II. 2. lines 71-76

With many a foul and midnight murder fed.
 * Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame,
 * II. 3. lines 87-88

Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
 * Visions of glory, spare my aching sight,
 * III. 1. lines 107-108

They breathe a soul to animate thy clay. Bright Rapture calls, and soaring, as she sings, Waves in the eye of Heav'n her many-colour'd wings.
 * Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear;
 * III. 2. lines 121-124

Fierce War, and faithful Love, And Truth severe, by fairy Fiction drest.
 * The verse adorn again
 * III. 3. lines 125-127

Quotes about Thomas Gray

 * Gray thought his language more poetical as it was more remote from common use.
 * Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets (1781), "The Life of Gray"

 * Next day I dined with Johnson at Mr. Thrale's. He attacked Gray, calling him "a dull fellow." BOSWELL. "I understand he was reserved, and might appear dull in company; but surely he was not dull in poetry." JOHNSON. "Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull in every where. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him GREAT. He was a mechanical poet." He then repeated some ludicrous lines, which have escaped my memory, and said "Is not that GREAT, like his Odes?"
 * Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, Life of Johnson (1791)

 * [The editor of Facetiae Cantabrigienses, Richard Gooch writes:] Those who remember Mr. Gray when at the University of Cambridge, where he resided the greater part of his life, will recollect that he was a little prim fastidous man, distinguished by a short shuffling step. He commonly held up his gown behind with one of his hands, at the same time cocking up his chin, and perking up his nose. Christopher Smart, who was contemporary with him at Pembroke Hall, used to say that Gray walked "as if he had fouled his small-clothes, and looked as if he smelt it."
 * Facetiae Cantabrigienses: Consisting of Anecdotes, Smart Sayings, Satirics, Retorts, &c, &c, by or Relating to Celebrated Cantabs, ed. R. Gooch (1825)

 * ... After the manner of Gilbert White, who, unknown to the poet, was making similar observations at Selborne, Gray kept a calendar in which he noted the opening of flowers and the arrival of birds.
 * John Vaughan, April 1917, quote p. 444

title: Thomas Gray


text:
Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster (18 January 1782 – 25 October 1852) was a United States Senator and Secretary of State. Famed for his ability as an orator, Webster was one of the most important figures in the Second Party System from the 1820s to the 1850s.

Quotes

 * A strong impression that something must be done, is the origin of many bad measures.
 * Speech On the Bank of the United States, delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, Jan. 2, 1815; reported in Speeches and Forensic Arguments (1848) by Daniel Webster, vol. 1, p. 225

 * It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!
 * Oral argument before the Supreme Court of the United States, March 10, 1818, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518 (1918)

 * Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.
 * Speech at Plymouth, Massachusetts (22 December 1820)

 * Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.
 * Speech (2 April 1824); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), volume iii, page 141

 * He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet.
 * Speech on Hamilton (10 March 1831)

 * On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they [the Colonies] raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome in the height of her glory is not to be compared — a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drumbeat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.
 * Speech (7 May 1834); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), page 110

 * God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
 * Speech (3 June 1834); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), volume iv, page 47

 * “What is an oath?” . . . [I]t is founded on a degree of consciousness that there is a Power above us that will reward our virtues or punish our vices. . . . [O]ur system of oaths in all our courts, by which we hold liberty and property and all our rights, are founded on or rest on Christianity and a religious belief.
 * Mr. Webster’s Speech in Defense of the Christian Ministry and in Favor of the Religious Instruction of the Young, Delivered in the Supreme Court of the United States, February 10, 1844, in the Case of Stephen Girard’s Will (Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1844), pp. 43, 51.

 * One country, one constitution, one destiny.
 * Speech (15 March 1837); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), page 349

 * There are persons who constantly clamor. They complain of oppression, speculation, and pernicious influence of wealth. They cry out loudly against all banks and corporations, and a means by which small capitalists become united in order to produce important and beneficial results. They carry on mad hostility against all established institutions. They would choke the fountain of industry and dry all streams.
 * Speech in the Senate (12 March 1838)

 * Sea of upturned faces.
 * Speech (30 September 1842); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), Vol. II, page 117

 * Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on Earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together. Wherever her temple stands, and so long as it is duly honored, there is a foundation for social security, general happiness and the improvement and progress of our race.
 * On Mr. Justice Story (September 12, 1845); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), page 300

 * Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.
 * Speech (July 25 and 27, 1846); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), Vol. V, p. 187

 * Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.
 * Speech at the Charleston Bar Dinner (May 10, 1847); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), Vol. II, p. 393

 * The law: It has honored us; may we honor it.
 * Speech at the Charleston Bar Dinner (May 10, 1847); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), Vol. II, p. 394

 * I have read their platform, and though I think there are some unsound places in it, I can stand upon it pretty well. But I see nothing in it both new and valuable. "What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable."
 * Speech at Marshfield, Massachusetts (1 September 1848); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), p. 433
 * Confer Henry Brougham's "What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable." (The Edinburgh Review, The Work of Thomas Young, c. 1802)

 * And now, Mr. President, instead of speaking of the possibility or utility of secession, instead of dwelling in these caverns of darkness, instead of groping with those ideas so full of all that is horrid and horrible, let us come out into the light of day; let us enjoy the fresh airs of Liberty and Union; let us cherish those hopes which belong to us; let us devote ourselves to those great objects that are fit for our consideration and our action; let us raise our conceptions to the magnitude and the importance of the duties that devolve upon us; let our comprehension be as broad as the country for which we act, our aspirations as high as its certain destiny; let us not be pygmies in a case that calls for men. Never did there devolve on any generation of men higher trusts than now devolve upon us for the preservation of this constitution, and the harmony and peace of all who are destined to live under it. Let us make our generation one of the strongest and the brightest links in that golden chain which is destined, I fondly believe, to grapple the people of all the states to this constitution, for ages to come.
 * Speech to the Senate In reference to the Slavery Compromise (7 March 1850)

 * I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American!
 * Speech (July 17, 1850); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), p. 437

 * I shall defer my visit to Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty, until its doors shall fly open on golden hinges to lovers of Union as well as lovers of liberty.
 * Letter (April 1851)

 * Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades: shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers, a monster watch; and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.
 * On the Old Man of the Mountain

 * The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.
 * The Dignity and Importance of History (23 February 1852)

 * If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble to dust; but if we work on men's immortal minds, if we impress on them with high principles, the just fear of God and love for their fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.
 * Address Delivered by the Hon. Daniel Webster in Faneuil Hall (22 May 1852), at the Request of the City Council of Boston; City Document No. 31. Boston: J.H. Eastburn (1852)

 * I still live.
 * Last words (24 October 1852)

 * There are men, in all ages, who mean to exercise power usefully; but who mean to exercise it. They mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters.
 * A speech delivered at Niblo’s Saloon, in New York, on the 15 of March, 1837.
 * The Works of Daniel Webster, Boston, Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851, vol. 1, p. 358.

 * If there be any thing in my style or thought to be commended, the credit is due to my kind parents in instilling into my mind an early love of the Scriptures.
 * Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 33

 * We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no, Sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors, and a ruined people.
 * The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston, MA:Little, Brown, 1890), p. 413

Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument (1825)

 * Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument (17 June 1825) Full text online

 * We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and the parting day linger and play on its summit!
 * p. 62

 * Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day.
 * p. 64

 * Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of intellectual operation.
 * p. 71

 * The civilized world seems at last to be proceeding to the conviction of that fundamental and manifest truth, that the powers of government are but a trust, and that they cannot be lawfully exercised but for the good of the community. As knowledge is more and more extended, this conviction becomes more and more general. Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams.
 * p. 74

 * If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano will break out and flame up to heaven.

 * Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.
 * The last sentence of this quote is incised in marble on the wall of the United States House of Representatives chamber, directly behind the Speaker's chair (with the word "develop" spelled with a final "e").

 * Let our object be, our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration for ever!
 * p. 78

Discourse in Commemoration of Adams and Jefferson (1826)

 * Discourse in Commemoration of Adams and Jefferson, Faneuil Hall, Boston (2 August 1826)

 * Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote.
 * p. 133
 * See also: "Live or die, sink or swim" (George Peele, Edward I, c. 1584)

 * It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment,—Independence now and Independence forever.
 * p. 136

 * Although no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record of their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored.
 * p. 146

 * Washington is in the clear upper sky.
 * p. 148

Second Reply to Hayne (1830)

 * Second Reply to Hayne (26 - 27 January 1830) · Online extract · Webster's Reply (27 January 1830), as published in Gale & Seaton's Register of Debates in Congress, Vol. VI (1830), p. 58 · The Great Debate between Hayne and Webster : The Speech of Daniel Webster in reply to Robert Young Hayne edited by Lindsay Swift (2 February 1898)

 * The gentleman has not seen how to reply to this, otherwise than by supposing me to have advanced the doctrine that a national debt is a national blessing.

 * I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.

 * The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.

 * When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the glorious ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in the original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those words of delusion and folly, 'Liberty first and Union afterward,'; but everywhere, spread over all the characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, -- Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!

Argument on the murder of Captain White (1830)

 * "Argument on the murder of Captain White" (6 April 1830), as reported in The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), edited by Edward Everett volume vi.

 * There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.

 * There is nothing so powerful as truth — and often nothing so strange.

 * Fearful concatenation of circumstances.

 * A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.

On the Agriculture of England (1840)

 * On the Agriculture of England (13 January 1840)

 * An English farmer looks not merely to the present year's crop. He considers what will be the condition of the land when that crop is off; and what it will be fit for the next year. He studies to use his land so as not to abuse it. On the contrary, his aim is to get crop after crop, while still the land shall be growing better and better. If he should content himself with raising from the soil a large crop this year, and then leave it neglected and exhausted, he would starve. It is upon this fundamental idea of constant production without exhaustion, that the system of English cultivation, and, indeed, of all good cultivation, is founded. England is not original in this. Flanders, and perhaps Italy, have been her teachers.

 * Is it practicable, on the soil and in the climate of Massachusetts, to pursue a succession of crops? I cannot question it; and I have entire confidence in the improvements to our husbandry, and the other great advantages, which would accrue from judicious rotation of products. The capacities of the soil of Massachusetts are undoubted. One hundred bushels of corn to an acre have been repeatedly produced, and other crops in like abundance. But this will not effect the proper ends of a judicious and profitable agriculture, unless we can so manage our husbandry that, by a judicious and proper succession of the crops, land will not only be restored after an exhausting crop, but gradually enriched by cultivation.

 * Suppose that, by some new discovery, or some improved mode of culture, only one per cent could be added to the annual results of English cultivation; this, of itself, would materially affect the comfortable subsistence of millions of human beings.

 * Let us never forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. Man may be civilized, in some degree, without great progress in manufactures and with little commerce with his distant neighbors. But without the cultivation of the earth, he is, in all countries, a savage. Until he gives up the chase, and fixes himself in some place and seeks a living from the earth, he is a roaming barbarian. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.
 * p. 457

On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (1843)

 * On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (17 June 1843)

 * From the accession of Henry the Seventh to the breaking out of the civil wars, England enjoyed much greater exemption from war, foreign and domestic, than for a long period before, and during the controversy between the houses of York and Lancaster. These years of peace were favorable to commerce and the arts. Commerce and the arts augmented general and individual knowledge; and knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.
 * p. 93

 * From the time of its discovery, the Spanish government pushed forward its settlements in America, not only with vigor, but with eagerness.... The robbery and destruction of the native race was the achievement of standing armies, in the right of the king, and by his authority, fighting in his name, for the aggrandizement of his power and the extension of his prerogatives, with military ideas under arbitrary maxims, — a portion of that dreadful instrumentality by which a perfect despotism governs a people. As there was no liberty in Spain, how could liberty be transmitted to Spanish colonies?

 * Spain stooped on South America, like a vulture on its prey. Every thing was force. Territories were acquired by fire and sword. Cities were destroyed by fire and sword. Hundreds of thousands of human beings fell by fire and sword. Even conversion to Christianity was attempted by fire and sword.

 * Standing armies are the oppressive instruments for governing the people, in the hands of hereditary and arbitrary monarchs. A military republic, a government founded on mock elections and supported only by the sword, is a movement indeed, but a retrograde and disastrous movement, from the regular and old-fashioned monarchical systems. If men would enjoy the blessings of republican government, they must govern themselves by reason, by mutual counsel and consultation, by a sense and feeling of general interest, and by the acquiescence of the minority in the will of the majority, properly expressed; and, above all, the military must be kept, according to the language of our Bill of Rights, in strict subordination to the civil authority.

 * The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God.
 * p. 102

 * America has furnished to Europe proof of the fact, that popular institutions, founded on equality and the principle of representation, are capable of maintaining governments, able to secure the rights of person, property, and reputation. America has proved that it is practicable to elevate the mass of mankind, — that portion which in Europe is called the laboring, or lower class, — to raise them to self-respect, to make them competent to act a part in the great right and great duty of self-government; and she has proved that this may be done by education and the diffusion of knowledge. America has furnished to the world the character of Washington! And if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind.
 * p. 105

 * In our day and generation let us seek to raise and improve the moral sentiment, so that we may look, not for a degraded, but for an elevated and improved future.... And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, "Thank God, I — I also — am an American!"
 * p. 107

Misattributed

 * If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.
 * First reported in the Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bible Society (1870), p. 27. This is actually a misquote combining phrases from different lines in an address delivered by Webster to the New York Historical Society on February 23, 1852.
 * Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.
 * The earliest version of this seems to be from Savings and Loan Annual 1963, p. 56 published by the United States Savings and Loan League. Variants of it were quoted by President Ronald Reagan, here, here, and here, for example. A similar quote can be found in a speech by Edwin Meese, a longtime associate of Reagan, part of a 1986 book (pamphlet?), The Great debate: interpreting our written Constitution, page 56
 * Webster did say, in two different places and times, words that are similar enough to be the presumable basis of this misquote, though the phrase "the Republic for which it stands" is best known from its presence in The Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892, about 40 years after Webster died. These are Webster's words:
 * Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution of your country and the government established under it. Leave evils which exist in some parts of the country, but which are beyond your control, to the all-wise direction of an over-ruling Providence. Perform those duties which are present, plain and positive. Respect the laws of your country." (1851 letter from Daniel Webster to Dr. William B. Gooch of West Dennis, Massachusetts, quoted in an 1898 publication of the Bay State Monthly)
 * We live under the only government that ever existed, which was formed by the deliberate consultations of the people. Miracles do not cluster. That which has happened but once in six thousand years, cannot be expected to happen often. Such a government, once destroyed, would have a void to be filled, perhaps for centuries, with evolution and tumult, riot and despotism. (From an 1882 book, which says it is printing an oration given by Webster in 1802; similar but not exactly the same wording can be found in The Granite monthly: a magazine of literature, history and state ...: Volume 5 - Page 7, 1882, which said that it was printing an 1805 address given by Webster in Concord, Massachusetts.) [That Webster would use similar wording in separate orations could be expected, of course.]
 * The misquote is notable for the emphasis on the Constitution rather the government of the United States; for using the word "fail" (sometimes, "fall"), rather than "destroyed", which opens up a line of argument that Webster was concerned about the Constitution being misinterpreted, in legal cases; and that worldwide anarchy could result from something happening in the United States, something fairly unthinkable in the first half of the 19th century, when the United States was in no way an important country in international matters.

Quotes about Webster

 * It's a story they tell in the border country, where Massachusetts joins Vermont and New Hampshire. Yes, Dan'l Webster's dead — or, at least, they buried him. But every time there's a thunderstorm around Marshfield, they say you can hear his rolling voice in the hollows of the sky. And they say that if you go to his grave and speak loud and clear, "Dan'l Webster — Dan'l Webster!" the ground'll begin to shiver and the trees begin to shake. And after a while you'll hear a deep voice saying, "Neighbor, how stands the Union?" Then you better answer the Union stands as she stood, rock-bottomed and copper-sheathed, one and indivisible, or he's liable to rear right out of the ground. At least, that's what I was told when I was a youngster.
 * Stephen Vincent Benét, in The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Daniel Webster


text:
Thomas Southerne

Thomas Southerne (1660 – May 22, 1746), Irish dramatist, was born at Oxmantown, near Dublin, in 1660, and entered Trinity College, Dublin in 1676. Two years later he was entered at the Middle Temple, London.

Quotes

 * Pity's akin to love.
 * Oroonoka, Act ii, scene 1; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Of all the paths [that] lead to a woman's love / Pity's the straightest", John Fletcher, The Knight of Malta, Act i, scene 1.

 * Of the king's creation you may be; but he who makes a count ne'er made a man.
 * Sir Anthony Love, Act ii, scene 1; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "I weigh the man, not his title; 't is not the king's stamp can make the metal better", William Wycherley, The Plaindealer, Act i. scene 1.

title: Thomas Southerne


text:
Jean Ingelow

Jean Ingelow (March 17, 1820 – July 20, 1897) was an English poet and novelist.

Poems (1863)
London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1863
 * Crowds of bees are giddy with clover Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet, Crowds of larks at their matins hang over, Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.
 * "Divided", line 5, p. 1.

 * But two are walking apart forever And wave their hands for a mute farewell.
 * "Divided", line 59, p. 6.

 * Let me be only sure; for sooth to tell The sorest dole is doubt.
 * "Honours—Part II", line 83, p. 21.

 * Is there never a chink in the world above Where they listen for words from below?
 * "Supper at the Mill", Mother sings, line 11, p. 48.

 * The while He sits whose name is Love, And waits, as Noah did, for the dove, To wit if she would fly to him. He waits for us, while, houseless things, We beat about with bruised wings On the dark floods and water-springs, The ruined world, the desolate sea; With open windows from the prime All night, all day, He waits sublime, Until the fulness of the time Decreed from His eternity.
 * "Scholar and Carpenter", line 54, p. 52.

 * And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.
 * "The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire, 1571", stanza 20, line 6, p. 148.

 * Man dwells apart, though not alone, He walks among his peers unread; The best of thoughts which he hath known, For lack of listeners are not said.
 * "Afternoon at a Parsonage", Afterthought, line 1, p. 159.

 * To bear, to nurse, to rear, To watch and then to lose: To see my bright ones disappear, Drawn up like morning dews.
 * "Songs of Seven", Seven Times Six. Giving in Marriage, line 1, p. 167.

A Story of Doom (1867)
A Story of Doom and Other Poems (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1867)
 * Man is the miracle in nature. God Is the One Miracle to man. Behold, "There is a God," thou sayest. Thou sayest well: In that thou sayest all. To Be is more Of wonderful, than being, to have wrought, Or reigned, or rested.
 * "A Story of Doom", Book VII, p. 191.

 * Learn that to love is the one way to know, Or God or man: it is not love received That maketh man to know the inner life Of them that love him; his own love bestowed Shall do it.
 * "A Story of Doom", Book VII, p. 191.

 * When our thoughts are born, Though they be good and humble, one should mind How they are reared, or some will go astray And shame their mother.
 * "Gladys and Her Island", p. 238.

 * It is a comely fashion to be glad,— Joy is the grace we say to God.
 * "Songs with Preludes: Dominion", p. 269.

The Monitions of the Unseen (1871)
The Monitions of the Unseen and Poems of Love and Childhood (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1871)
 * I am glad to think I am not bound to make the wrong go right; But only to discover, and to do With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints.
 * "The Monitions of the Unseen", p. 31.

 * Like coral insects multitudinous The minutes are whereof our life is made. They build it up as in the deep's blue shade It grows, it comes to light, and then, and thus For both there is an end.
 * "Work", line 1, p. 54.

 * Work is its own best earthly need, Else have we none more than the sea-born throng Who wrought these marvellous isles that bloom afar.
 * "Work", line 12, p. 54.

 * How short our happy days appear! How long the sorrowful!
 * "The Mariner's Cave", line 223, p. 70.

 * Reign, and keep life in this our deep desire— Our only greatness is that we aspire.
 * "A Snow Mountain", line 13, p. 97.

 * O sleep, we are beholden to thee, sleep, Thou bearest angels to us in the night, Saints out of heaven with palms. Seen by thy light Sorrow is some old tale that goeth not deep; Love is a pouting child.
 * "Sleep (A Woman Speaks)", line 1, p. 98.

Off the Skelligs: A Novel (1872)
Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1872
 * I do not know why a girl should be expected to talk well till she is at least twenty. There cannot be much in her, she may be prettily exacting, or charmingly modest, but her attractions must be personal, not intellectual.
 * Ch. 12, p. 188.

 * A great many people think of religion as if it was a game that they had to play with an August Opponent—a game at which both could not win, and yet they actually think they can play it unfairly. They want to cheat. But in that grand and awful game, it cannot be said that either wins unless both do.
 * Ch. 12, p. 193.

 * What a bore it is […] that the dull and uneducated and unimaginative should possess a dogged contempt for danger, and a kind of stupid fearlessness that we are never to have. I do not see how a highly imaginative man can have much animal courage.
 * Ch. 13, pp. 202–203

 * [W]e wish for more in life, rather than for more of it.
 * Ch. 13, p. 203.

 * [U]gliness of the right sort is a kind of beauty. It has some of the best qualities of beauty—it attracts observation and fixes the memory.
 * Ch. 18, p. 278.

 * [T]his is a woman-ridden age. Yet it is but fair to confess that all the former ones were man-ridden ages. What we want is a happy proportion.
 * Ch. 21, p. 351.

 * [O]ne must have a certain amount of both intelligence and knowledge to be amazed even at the most extraordinary things.
 * Ch. 21, p. 356.

 * Our own faces, seen suddenly, will sometimes tell us things concerning ourselves that we did not suspect before.
 * Ch. 30, p. 560.

 * I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered.
 * Ch. 31, p. 571.

Fated to Be Free: A Novel (1875)
Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1875
 * It seemed proper indeed to crowd the pages with children, for in real life they run all over; the world is covered thickly with the prints of their little footsteps, though, as a rule, books written for grown-up people are kept almost clear of them.
 * Author's Preface to the American edition, p. iv.

 * Nature, before it has been touched by man, is almost always beautiful, strong, and cheerful in man's eyes; but nature, when he has once given it his culture and then forsaken it, has usually an air of sorrow and helplessness. He has made it live the more by laying his hand upon it, and touching it with his life. It has come to relish of his humanity, and it is so flavoured with his thoughts, and ordered and permeated by his spirit, that if the stimulus of his presence is withdrawn it cannot for a long while do without him, and live for itself as fully and as well as it did before.
 * Ch. 1, pp. 1–2.

 * A thing that is very unexpected and moderately strange, we meet with wide-opened eyes, with a start and perhaps exclamations; but a thing more than strange, utterly unaccounted for, quite unreasonable, and the last thing one could have supposed possible as coming from the person who demanded it, is met in far quieter fashion.
 * Ch. 9, p. 107.

 * It would be hard to say of any man that he is never right. If he is always thinking that he has forgotten a certain lady, surely he is right sometimes.
 * Ch. 9, p. 113.

 * The most joyous and gladsome natures are often most keenly alive to impressions of reverence, and wonder, and awe. Emily's mind longed and craved to annex itself to all things fervent, deep, and real. As she walked on the common grass, she thought the better of it because the feet of Christ had trodden it also.
 * Ch. 17, p. 203.

 * "I'm like a good clock," said Crayshaw, "I neither gain nor lose. I can strike, too."
 * Ch. 19, p. 229.

 * Is it what we impart, or impute to nature from ourselves, that we chiefly lean upon? or does she truly impart of what is really in her to us?
 * Ch. 25, p. 315.

 * Emily had not one of those poverty-stricken natures which are never glad excepting for some special reason drawing them above themselves. She was naturally joyous and happy, unless under the pressure of an active sorrow that shaded her sky and quenched her sunshine. She lived in an elevated region full of love and wonder, taking kindly alike to reverence and to hope; but she was seldom excited, her feelings were not shallow enough to be easily troubled with excitement, or made fitful with agitation.
 * Ch. 29, p. 372.

 * There is nothing so unreasonable as infancy, excepting the maturer stages of life.
 * Ch. 35, p. 461.

Sarah de Berenger: A Novel (1879)
Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1879
 * She was not one of those poets who write verses—very few are; none but such as are poets through and through should ever do that. Verse is only words, the garment that makes the spirit of poetry visible to others; and poets who have but little of the spirit often fritter that little away in the effort to have it seen. But she was a poet in this, that the elemental passions of our nature were strong in her, and she bowed to them with childlike singleness of soul.
 * Ch. 1, pp. 10–11.

 * Divine Love came down to take on itself our sins, but there is no Saviour to do the like for our mistakes.
 * Ch. 1, p. 15.

 * The human mind is always inexorable in demanding a motive for all human actions. It is only himself that each man permits to act without one, and avails himself of the privilege with astonishing frequency.
 * Ch. 11, p. 134.

 * There is nothing like action to show a man what he really is.[…] Till the decisive moment came he had not perhaps the remotest suspicion that he cared for human life in the abstract; and here he stands dripping, having risked his own to save that of an absolute stranger. He perceives the awful and mysterious oneness of humanity, how it draws the units to the whole. He is not independent, as he may have thought; he is part of all.
 * Ch. 14, p. 164.

 * Every right and natural responsibility of which you relieve a man, taking it on yourself, makes him less able to bear those responsibilities that nothing can relieve him of. If you could take all his duties from him, as we sometimes do, it would only make it certain that he would not then even do his duty by himself.
 * Ch. 15, p. 183.

 * [H]e was a graduate in nature's university. Nature is wiser than the schoolmaster; she educates but she never crams. Her scholars do not go up to take their degrees; their degrees come to them.
 * Ch. 16, p. 198.

 * [H]e could not escape thinking of her, being the slave for the moment of every pretty girl. Good young men generally are.
 * Ch. 19, p. 224.

 * The first feeling drew him to her side; all nature seemed to smile so on her sweetness. She reminded him, in that secluded spot, of a fair lily shaded by its own green leaf. And then the second feeling came like a smart box on the ear. He did not like to be so suddenly overcome.[…] So […] he went on and made the circuit of the garden. But that caused no difference, of course. Amabel, not being present, was only the more there. She was everywhere. The young growing things about him were lovely, for they were like her. The old steadfast trees were interesting, as in contrast to her. And here was the donkey! The very donkey was interesting, because she often tried in vain to make him go.
 * Ch. 20, pp. 230–231.

 * There can be little doubt that it is the fools, and not the wise, who govern the world. While the wise are considering, the fools act; while the wise investigate, the fools have made up their minds; by the time the wise have discovered, the fools have made arrangements, and the wise, for the sake of law and order, or, if not, for the sake of peace and quietness, are obliged to give way.
 * Ch. 35, p. 395.

Don John (1881)
Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1881
 * In general, the woman bears the small misfortunes and continued disappointments of life best, and the man bears best the great ones.
 * Ch. 6, p. 74.

 * If we consider women whose lot it is to inspire deep affection, we shall sometimes find them, not those who can most generously bestow, but those who can most generously receive.
 * Ch. 6, p. 74.

 * It would be very unlucky for cats if people in a body should discover how much more jolly it was to be out in the warm golden mist of moonlight, when all was so fresh and sweet, than tucked up in their heated bedrooms under the low ceiling that shuts out the stars.
 * Ch. 9, p. 108.

 * We often think we are of great importance to certain people; that they must be thinking of us and our affairs, that they watch our actions and shape their course accordingly. In general it is not so; we are quite mistaken.
 * Ch. 12, p. 140.

 * I am always finding out more reasons for loving you. If you send me out to walk among the rose-trees I shall find them in the shadows at their roots, and in the rain-drops that they shake from their buds. All the reading in the book of my life is about you, and the world outside tells me of you. Things fair and young and good I must needs love, because they are like you; there is pity in me, and I find a pathos in what is unlovely and old, because it is unlike.
 * Ch. 33, p. 356.

 * And we do want poetry for its beauty […] Yes, only for its beauty; for its moral power over us—its teaching, comforting, and elevating power all depend on its beauty.
 * Ch. 36, p. 382.

John Jerome: His Thoughts and Ways (1886)
Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1886
 * If one cannot have success, the next most agreeable thing is failure.
 * Ch. 3, p. 34.

 * A man's world, but woman bides her time.
 * Ch. 7, p. 107.

 * A man can sometimes hold his own with one woman, but never with two.
 * Ch. 12, p. 207.

title: Jean Ingelow


text:
Rufus Choate

Rufus Choate (October 1, 1799 – July 13, 1859) was an American lawyer, Whig politician, and orator.

Quotes

 * We have built no national temples but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the Constitution.
 * "The Importance of Illustrating New-England History by a Series of Romances like the Waverley Novels", a lecture delivered at Salem, Massachusetts (1833).

 * The courage of New England was the "courage of conscience." It did not rise to that insane and awful passion, the love of war for itself.
 * Address at Ipswich Centennial (1834).

 * The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good.
 * Speech in the Senate (2 July 1841).

 * There was a state without king or nobles; there was a church without a bishop; there was a people governed by grave magistrates which it had selected, and by equal laws which it had framed.
 * Speech before the New England Society (22 December 1843)
 * Possibly related to :
 * The Americans equally detest the pageantry of a king and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop.
 * Junius, Letter xxxv (19 December 1769)
 * It established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.
 * George Bancroft on Calvinism, in History of the United States (1834), Vol. III, Ch. vi.
 * Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring A Church without a bishop, a State without a King
 * Anonymous poem "The Puritans' Mistake", published by Oliver Ditson (1844).

 * All that happens in the world of Nature or Man, — every war; every peace; every hour of prosperity; every hour of adversity; every election; every death ; every life; every success and every failure, — all change, — all permanence, — the perished leaf; the unutterable glory of stars, — all things speak truth to the thoughtful spirit.
 * "The Power of a State Developed by Mental Culture", an address to the Mercantile Library Association (18 November 1844), published in The Works of Rufus Choate : Memoir, Lectures and Addresses (1862), edited by Samuel Gilman Brown.

 * Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading.
 * Speech at the dedication of the Peabody Institute (29 September 1854).

 * We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag, and keep step to the music of the Union.
 * Letter to the Whig Convention, Worcester (1 October 1855).

 * Its constitution the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence.
 * Letter to the Maine Whig Committee (1856). Six years earlier, Choate gave a lecture in Providence which was reviewed by Franklin J. Dickman in the Journal of December 14, 1849. Unless Choate used the words "glittering generalities", and Dickman made reference to them, it would seem as if Dickman must have the credit of originating the catchword. Dickman wrote: "We fear that the glittering generalities of the speaker have left an impression more delightful than permanent". Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * A book is the only immortality.
 * As quoted in Part of a Man's Life (1905) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

 * Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument.
 * As quoted in Dictionary of American Maxims (1955) by David George Plotkin
 * Variant: Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
 * As quoted in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) edited by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 50.

title: Rufus Choate


text:
Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (30 October 1751 – 7 July 1816) was an Irish playwright and Whig statesman.

Quotes

 * An apothecary should never be out of spirits.
 * St. Patrick's Day (1775), Act I, sc. i

 * Death's a debt; his mandamus binds all alike — no bail, no demurrer.
 * St. Patrick's Day (1775), Act II, sc. iv

 * I will not say that there have been no instances of sedition; but I will affirm even that the evidence of these appears in so questionable a shape as ought to excite your suspicion. It is supported by a system of spies and informers, a system which has been carried to a greater extent under the present administration, than in any former period of the history of the country. ... [T]he government which avails itself of such support does not exist for the happiness of the people. It is a system which is calculated to engender suspicion, and to beget hostility; it not only destroys all confidence between man and man, but between the governors and the governed; where it does not find sedition, it creates it.
 * Speech in the House of Commons against the Treasonable and Seditious Practices Bill (5 January 1795), quoted in Speeches of the Late Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Vol. IV (1816), p. 23

 * He was of opinion that the Press should be unfettered; that its freedom should be, as indeed it was, commensurate with the freedom of the People, and the well-being of a virtuous State: on that account, he thought that even one hundred libels had better be ushered into the world, than one prosecution be instituted which might endanger the liberty of the press of this country.
 * Speech in the House of Commons (4 April 1798), quoted in The Parliamentary Register; Or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Lords and House of Commons, Vol. V (1798), p. 584

Provokes the caper which he seems to chide.
 * While his off-heel, insidiously aside,
 * Pizarro (first acted 24 May 1799), Prologue

 * Such protection as vultures give to lambs.
 * Pizarro (first acted 24 May 1799), Act ii, scene 2

 * Date not the life which thou hast run by the mean of reckoning of the hours and days, which though hast breathed: a life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line, — by deeds, not years...
 * Pizarro (first acted 24 May 1799), Act iv, Scene 1. Compare: "Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours / Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours", Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii

 * My visits to you may possibly be misunderstood by my friends; but I hope you know, Mr. Addington, that I have an unpurchasable mind.
 * Remarks to the Prime Minister, Henry Addington (c. 1802), quoted in George Pellow, The Life and Correspondence of The Right Hon. Henry Addington, First Viscount of Sidmouth, Vol. II (1847), p. 105

 * He stated it distinctly...as what he conceived was the unalterable resolution of ministers, that no proposal for peace should be entertained, while a single French soldier had a footing on British ground. [This sentiment was universally applauded.]
 * Speech in the House of Commons on the war with France (10 August 1803), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXXVI (1820), column 1697

 * THEY, by a strange Frenzy driven, fight for Power, for Plunder, and extended Rule— WE , for our Country, our Altars, and our Homes.— THEY follow an ADVENTURER , whom they fear—and obey a Power which they hate— WE serve a Monarch whom we love—a God whom we adore...They call on us to barter all of Good we have inherited and proved, for the desperate Chance of Something better which they promise.—Be our plain Answer this: The Throne WE honour is the PEOPLE'S CHOICE —the Laws we reverence are our brave Fathers' Legacy—the Faith we follow teaches us to live in bonds of Charity with all Mankind, and die with Hope of Bliss beyond the Grave. Tell your Invaders this; and tell them too, we seek no Change; and, least of all, such Change as they would bring us.
 * Sheridan's Address to the People. Our King! our Country! And our God! (1803), quoted in Frank J. Klingberg and Sigurd B. Hustvedt (eds.), The Warning Drum. The British Home Front Faces Napoleon. Broadsides of 1803 (1944), pp. 93–94

 * Take our constitution, wanting certainly as it did many reforms, yet, practically, it afforded the best security that human wisdom had ever given to man.
 * Speech in the House of Commons (21 July 1812), quoted in The Parliamentary Debates from the Year 1803 to the Present Time, Vol. XXIII (1812), column 1156

But easy writing's curst hard reading.
 * You write with ease to show your breeding,
 * Clio's Protest (1819)

 * An oyster may be crossed in love.
 * Clio's Protest (1819)

 * The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.
 * Sheridaniana, Speech in Reply to Mr. Dundas

As most weak persons do; But still believe that story wrong, Which ought not to be true!
 * Believe not each accusing tongue,
 * Reported in Nicholas Harris Nicolas, The Carcanet: a Literary Album, Containing Select Passages from the Most Distinguished English Writers (1828), p. 132

The Rivals (1775)

 * 'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.
 * Act I, sc. ii

 * Illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.
 * Act I, sc. ii

 * A progeny of learning.
 * Act I, sc. ii

 * Never say more than is necessary.
 * Act II, sc. i

 * I know you are laughing in your sleeve.
 * Act II, sc. i

 * A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.
 * Act III, sc. i

 * He is the very pineapple of politeness!
 * Act III, sc. iii

 * If I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!
 * Act III, sc. iii

 * As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.
 * Act III, sc. iii

 * Too civil by half.
 * Act III, sc. iv

 * Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.
 * Act IV, sc. i

 * We will not anticipate the past; so mind, young people, — our retrospection will be all to the future.
 * Act IV, sc. ii

 * No caparisons, miss, if you please. Caparisons don't become a young woman.
 * Act IV, sc. ii

 * You are not like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once, are you?
 * Act IV, sc. ii

 * The quarrel is a very pretty quarrel as it stands; we should only spoil it by trying to explain it.
 * Act IV, sc. iii

 * You're our enemy; lead the way, and we 'll precede.
 * Act V, sc. i

 * There's nothing like being used to a thing.
 * Act V, sc. iii

 * As there are three of us come on purpose for the game, you won't be so cantankerous as to spoil the party by sitting out.
 * Act V, sc. iii

 * My valour is certainly going! — it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palm of my hands!
 * Act V, sc. iii

 * I own the soft impeachment.
 * Act V, sc. iii

Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.
 * Through all the drama — whether damned or not —
 * Epilogue

The Duenna (1775)

In eyes that would not look on me.
 * I ne'er could any luster see
 * Act I, sc. ii

 * I loved him for himself alone.
 * Act I, sc. iii

Will end a contest quicker Than justice, judge, or vicar.
 * A bumper of good liquor
 * Act I, sc. iii

I ne'er could injure you.
 * Had I a heart for falsehood framed,
 * Act I, sc. v

 * Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.
 * Act II, sc. iv

The School for Scandal (1777)

 * Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.
 * Act I, sc. i

 * You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.
 * Act I, sc. i

 * You had no taste when you married me.
 * Act I, sc. ii

 * Here is the whole set! a character dead at every word.
 * Act II, sc. ii

 * I leave my character behind me.
 * Act II, sc. ii

Here's to the widow of fifty; Here's to the flaunting, extravegant quean, And here's to the housewife that's thrifty. Let the toast pass — Drink to the lass; I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass.
 * Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen;
 * Act III, sc. iii

 * An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance.
 * Act IV, sc. i

 * Be just before you're generous.
 * Act IV, sc. i

 * It was an amiable weakness.
 * Act V, sc. i

The Critic (1779)

 * Steal! to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,—disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own.
 * Act I, sc. i

 * There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.
 * Act I, sc. i

 * The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous — licentious — abominable — infernal — Not that I ever read them — no — I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.
 * Act I, sc. i

 * Sheer necessity,—the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention.
 * Act I, sc. ii

 * Egad, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two!
 * Act I, sc. ii

 * A practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a professor of the art of puffing.
 * Act I, sc. ii

 * The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed!
 * Act I, sc. ii

 * No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope?
 * Act II, sc. i

 * Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.
 * Act II, sc. i

 * Where they do agree on the stage, their unanimity is wonderful.
 * Act II, sc. ii

 * Inconsolable to the minuet in Ariadne.
 * Act II, sc. ii

 * The Spanish fleet thou canst not see, because—it is not yet in sight!
 * Act II, sc. ii

 * An oyster may be crossed in love.
 * Act III, sc. i

 * I wish, sir, you would practice this without me. I can't stay dying here all night.
 * Act III, sc. i

Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

 * Quotes reported in Susan Ratcliffe, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, online ed. (2022), no. 7.79

 * You write with ease, to show your breeding, But easy writing’s vile hard reading.
 * ‘Clio’s Protest’. T. Moore ‘Life of Sheridan’ (1825) 1, 55

 * The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous—licentious—abominable—infernal—Not that I ever read them—No—I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.
 * ‘The Critic’ (1779) act 1, sc. 1

 * If it is abuse,—why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned goodnatured friend or another!
 * ‘The Critic’ (1779) act 1, sc. 1

 * Egad I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two!
 * ‘The Critic’ (1779) act 1, sc. 2

 * I wish sir, you would practise this without me. I can’t stay dying here all night. O Lord, Sir—when a heroine goes mad she always goes into white satin.
 * ‘The Critic’ (1779) act 3, sc. 1

 * An oyster may be crossed in love!
 * ‘The Critic’ (1779) act 3, sc. 1

 * I was struck all of a heap.
 * ‘The Duenna’ (1775) act 2, sc. 2

 * Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.
 * ‘The Duenna’ (1775) act 2, sc. 4

 * The throne we honour is the people’s choice.
 * ‘Pizarro’ (1799) act 2, sc. 2

 * Illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.
 * ‘The Rivals’ (1775) act 1, sc. 2

 * ’Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion. He is the very pineapple of politeness!
 * ‘The Rivals’ (1775) act 1, sc. 2

 * An aspersion upon my parts of speech!
 * ‘The Rivals’ (1775) act 3, sc. 3

 * If I reprehend any thing in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!
 * ‘The Rivals’ (1775) act 3, sc. 3

 * She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.
 * ‘The Rivals’ (1775) act 3, sc. 3

 * Too civil by half.
 * ‘The Rivals’ (1775) act 3, sc. 4

 * Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.
 * ‘The Rivals’ (1775) act 4, sc. 1

 * No caparisons, Miss, if you please!—Caparisons don’t become a young woman.
 * ‘The Rivals’ (1775) act 4, sc. 2

 * You are not like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once, are you?
 * ‘The Rivals’ (1775) act 4, sc. 2

 * The quarrel is a very pretty quarrel as it stands—we should only spoil it by trying to explain it.
 * ‘The Rivals’ (1775) act 4, sc. 3

 * My valour is certainly going!—it is sneaking off!—I feel it oozing out as it were at the palms of my hands!
 * ‘The Rivals’ (1775) act 5, sc. 3

 * You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.
 * ‘The School for Scandal’ (1777) act 1, sc. 1

 * You had no taste when you married me.
 * ‘The School for Scandal’ (1777) act 2, sc. 1

 * Mrs Candour: I’ll swear her colour is natural—I have seen it come and go—Lady Teazle: I dare swear you have, ma’am; it goes of a night and comes again in the morning.
 * ‘The School for Scandal’ (1777) act 2, sc. 2

 * Here is the whole set! a character dead at every word.
 * ‘The School for Scandal’ (1777) act 2, sc. 2.

 * I’m called away by particular business—but I leave my character behind me.
 * ‘The School for Scandal’ (1777) act 2, sc. 2

 * Here’s to the maiden of bashful fifteen Here’s to the widow of fifty Here’s to the flaunting, extravagant queen; And here’s to the housewife that’s thrifty. Let the toast pass— Drink to the lass— I’ll warrant she’ll prove an excuse for the glass!
 * ‘The School for Scandal’ (1777) act 3, sc. 3

 * An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance!
 * ‘The School for Scandal’ (1777) act 4, sc. 1

 * Rowley: I believe there is no sentiment he has more faith in as that ‘Charity begins at home’.Sir Oliver Surface: And his I presume is of that domestic sort which never stirs abroad at all.
 * ‘The School for Scandal’ (1777) act 5, sc. 1

 * There is no trusting appearances.
 * ‘The School for Scandal’ (1777) act 5, sc. 2

 * A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.
 * On being encountered drinking a glass of wine in the street, while watching his theatre, the Drury Lane, burn down; in T. Moore ‘Life of Sheridan’ (1825) 2, 20

 * The Right Honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.
 * Speech in reply to Mr Dundas, in T. Moore ‘Life of Sheridan’ (1825) 2, 471

 * Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
 * To a young lady; attributed

Quotes about Sheridan

 * Mr. Sheridan opened the third charge against Mr. Hastings... The subject of this charge was peculiarly fitted for displaying all the pathetic powers of eloquence; and never were they displayed with greater skill, force, and elegance, than upon this occasion. For five hours and an half Mr. Sheridan kept the attention of the house...fascinated by his eloquence; and when he sat down, the whole house — the members, peers, and strangers — involuntarily joined in a tumult of applause, and adopted a mode of expressing their approbation, new and irregular in that house, by loudly and repeatedly clapping their hands.
 * Annual Register, Or A View of the History, Politics, and Literature, For the Year 1787 (1789), p. 150

 * In the same book [The Columbian Orator], I met with one of Sheridan's mighty speeches on and in behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me. I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights.
 * Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), pp. 39-40

 * The country was highly indebted to him for his fair and manly conduct.
 * Henry Dundas on Sheridan's role in resolving the naval mutinies; speech in the House of Commons (2 June 1797), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXXIII (1818), column 804

 * [O]ne who was equally the delight of society, and the grace of literature — whom it has been for many years the fashion to quote as a bold reprover of the selfish spirit of party; and throughout a period fruitful of able men and trying circumstances, as the most popular specimen in the British senate of political consistency, intrepidity, and honour.
 * 'Mr. Sheridan', The Times (8 July 1816), p. 3

 * Mr. Sheridan is one of the most perfect comic writers I know, and unites the most uncommon qualities — his plots are sufficiently deep, without the clumsy entanglement and muddy profundity of Congreve — characters strictly in nature — wit without affectation. What talents! — The complete orator in the senate, or in Westminster Hall — and the excellent dramatist in the most difficult province of the drama!
 * Horace Walpole, Walpoliana (1825), pp. 153-154

title: Richard Brinsley Sheridan