A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.
For the most part, the best man’s spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave.
A hero’s love is as delicate as a maiden’s.
The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.
I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe.
For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.
Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded.
The only government that I recognize – and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army – is that power thatestablishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.
If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.
The lover wants no partiality. He says, Be so kind as to be just.
It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.
While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.
The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable; of a bad one, to make it less valuable.
Concord’s little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.
I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true; and they do not always mean what they say.
The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy under side of heaven’s pavement; it is only when seen at a favorable angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed.
If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.
I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.
There never is but one opportunity of a kind.
Good religious men, with the love of men in their hearts, and the means to pay their toll in their pockets.