The publick weal requires that a man should betray, and lye, and massacre. MONTAIGNE, Essays. Of Profit and Honesty. The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise up. PRUD'HOMME, Revolutions de Paris. Motto. Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Hamlet. iii, 1. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. Hamlet. ii, 2. By union the smallest states thrive, by discord the greatest are destroyed. SALLUST, Jugurtha. x. The public is a bad guesser, "stiff in opinion,” and almost " always in the wrong." DE QUINCEY, Essays. Protestantism. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. Twelfth Night. ii, 5. To preserve the life of citizens, is the greatest virtue in the father of his country. I love reform better than its modes. of how bad became better. SENECA, Octavia. 444. There is no history THOREAU, Letters. In a change of government, the poor seldom change anything except the name of their master. PHÆDRUS, Fabulæ. i, 15. The great men of the world, like the lights of a city, are not valued till gone out. ANON. We like to know the weaknesses of eminent persons: it consoles us for our inferiority. DE LAMBERT. To succeed, the candidate must be a gentleman by nature, and a scholar by education. COLTON, Lacon. The great man is not so great as folks think, and the dull man not so stupid as he seems. HUBBARD, Philistine. Promises retain men better than services. For them, hope is a chain, and gratitude a thread. PETIT-SENN. The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles. MONTESQUIEU, De l'Esprit. viii, ch. 1. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. WEBSTER, Eulogy on Adams and Jefferson. No solid South, no solid North, save when solid for the flag and the Union. MCKINLEY, Speech. Tuscumbia, April 30, 1901. Anarchy is no more an expression of "social discontent," than picking pockets or wife-beating. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Message. Dec. 3, 1901. He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. WEBSTER, Speech on Hamilton. March 10, 1831. The prudent man may direct a state; but it is the enthusiast who regenerates it, or ruins. LYTTON, Rienzi. Bk. I, ch. viii. Councillors of state sit plotting and playing their high chess-game whereof the pawns are men. CARLYLE, Sartor Resartus. Bk. I, ch. 3. The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. WEBSTER, Second Speech on Foot's Resolution. Jan. 26, 1830. Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. CLEVELAND, Veto, Texas Seed Bill. Feb. 16, 1887. A proud man is always hard to be pleased, because he hath too great expectations from others. BAXTER, Christian Ethics. One learns taciturnity best among people who have none, and loquacity among the taciturn. RICHTER, Hesperus. We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and keep step to the music of the Union. CHOATE, Letter to a Worcester Whig Convention. That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy. MACAULAY, on Mitford's History of Greece. 1824. Loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month. Romeo and Juliet. ii, 4. The good, alas! are few: they are scarcely as many as the gates of Thebes or the mouths of the Nile. JUVENAL, Satira. xiii, 26. Great men undertake great things because they are great, and fools because they think them easy. VAUVENARGUES. A great name is like an eternal epitaph engraved by the admiration of men on the road of time. SOUVESTRE. A difference of opinion, though in the merest trifles, alienates the minds, especially of high rank. CHESTERFIELD, Maxims. The upright, if he suffer calumny to move him, fears the tongue of man more than the eye of God. COLTON, Lacon. It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us, than the powerful whom we have injured. COLTON, Lacon. The American people never ran away from a difficult question or from a well-defined duty. MCKINLEY, Speech. Redlands, May 8, 1901. Glory is a shroud that posterity often tears from the shoulders of those who wore it when living. BÉRANGER. High positions are like the summit of high, steep rocks: eagles and reptiles alone can reach them. NECKER. A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. BURKE, Reflections on Revolution in France. In the opinion of all men he would have been regarded as capable of governing, if he had never governed. TACITUS, Annales. i, 49. Woman, I tell you, is a microcosm; and rightly to rule her requires as great talents as to govern a state. FOOTE, The Devil upon Two Sticks. i, 1. I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law. AMES, Speech. January, 1788. Deliberate with caution, but act with decision, and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness. COLTON, Lacon. To judge of the real importance of an individual, one should think of the effect his death would produce. LÉVIS. The chief want, in every state that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants. THOREAU, Yankee in Canada. A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature. BURKE, Vindication of Society. Why don't you show us a statesman who can rise up to the emergency, and cave in the emergency's head? ARTEMUS WARD, Things in New York. And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them. BURKE, Thoughts and Details on Society. Vol. v, p. 156. The infant, on first opening his eyes, ought to see his country, and to the hour of his death never lose sight of it. ROUSSEAU. Visible governments are the toys of some nations, the diseases of others, the harness of some, the burdens of more. Our country. RUSKIN, Sesame and Lilies. Lec. I, 42. In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong. STEPHEN DECATUR, Toast at Norfolk. When one is intensely interested in a certain cause, the tendency is to associate particularly with those who take the same view. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, The Rough Riders. p. I. |