[From a Speech in the House of Representatives, June, 1874.]
The division between church and state ought to be so absolute that no church property anywhere, in any State or in the nation, should be exempt from taxation; for, if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a church-tax upon the whole community.
Occasion may be the bugle-call that summons an army to battle, but the blast of a bugle can never make soldiers or win victories.
Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.
We cannot study nature profoundly without bringing ourselves into communion with the spirit of art which pervades and fills the universe.
If there be one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man; it is a man who dares to look the devil in the face, and tell him he is a devil.
It is one of the precious mysteries of sorrow, that it finds solace in unselfish thought.
True art is but the anti-type of nature, the embodiment of discovered beauty in utility.
In order to have any success in life, or any worthy success, you must resolve to carry into your work a fulness of knowledge; not merely a sufficiency, but more than a sufficiency.
Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing.
If you are not too large for the place, you are too small for it.
What the arts are to the world of matter, literature is to the world of mind.
Many books we can read in a railroad car, and feel a harmony between the rushing of the train and the haste of the author; but to enjoy standard works, we need the quiet of a winter evening; an easy-chair before a cheerful fire, and all the equanimity of spirits we can command.
He who would understand the real spirit of literature should not select authors of any one period alone, but rather go to the fountain-head, add trace the little rill as it courses along down the ages, broadening and deepening into the great ocean of thought which the men of the present are exploring.
The true literary man is no mere gleaner, following in the rear and gathering up the fragments of the world's thought; but he goes down deep into the heart of humanity, watches its throbbings; analyzes the forces at work there; traces out, with prophetic foresight, their tendencies, and thus, standing out far beyond his age, holds up the picture of what it is and is to be.