Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool.
What the arts are to the world of matter, literature is to the world of mind.
History is but the unrolled scroll of prophecy.
The world's history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian, philosopher, and historian--the humble listener--there has been a divine melody running through the song which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come.
Light itself is a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and abuses that are grown in darkness disappear like owls and bats before the light of day.
Liberty can be safe only when suffrage is illuminated by education.
Parties have an organic life and spirit of their own, an individuality and character which outlive the men who compose them; and the spirit and traditions of a party should be considered in determining their fitness for managing the affairs of the nation.
Of Garfield's finished days,
So fair, and all too few,
Destruction which at noonday strays
Could not the work undo.
O martyr, prostrate, calm!
I learn anew that pain
Achieves, as God's subduing psalm,
What else were all in vain.
Like Samson in his death
With mightiest labor rife,
The moments of thy halting breath
Were grandest of thy life.
And now amid the gloom
Which pierces mortal years,
There shines a star above thy tomb
To smile away our tears.