Extemporaneous speaking should be practised [sic] and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech. And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too much on speech-making. If any one, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.

If you wish to win a man over to your ideas, first make him your friend.

Democracy is "government of, by and for the people".

I see a very dark cloud on America's horizon, and that cloud is coming from Rome.

Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two [good and evil].

Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.

The petition of persons under eighteen, praying that I would free all slave children, and the heading of which petition it appears you wrote, was handed me a few days since by Senator Sumner. Please tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy, and that, while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it.