Heroes did not make our liberties, but they reflected and illustrated them.
After all, territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life. In them dwells its hope of immortality. Among them, if anywhere, are to be found its chief elements of destruction.
It matters little what may be the forms of national institution if the life, freedom, and growth of society are secured.
Finally, our great hope for the future--our great safeguard against danger--is to be found in the general and thorough education of our people, and in the virtue which accompanies such education.
The germ of our political institutions, the primary cell from which they were evolved, was in the New England town, and the vital force, the informing soul, of the town was the town meeting, which, for all local concerns, was kings, lords, and commons in all.
It is as much the duty of all good men to protect and defend the reputation of worthy public servants as to detect public rascals.
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.
Young men talk of trusting to the spur of the occasion. That trust is vain. Occasions can not make spurs. If you expect to wear spurs, you must win them. If you wish to use them, you must buckle them to your own heels before you go into the fight.
Greek is perhaps the most perfect instrument of thought ever invented by man, and its literature has never been equaled in purity of style and boldness of expression.