What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.

Do you think we choose the times into which we are born? Or do we fit the times we are born into?

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

The enthusiastic uprising of the people in our cause, is our great reliance; and we can not safely give it any check, even thoughit overflows, and runs in channels not laid down in any chart.

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.

It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other. And the same is true in all joint operations wherein those engaged can have none but a common end in view and can differ only as to the choice of means. In a storm at sea no one on board can wish the ship to sink, and yet not unfrequently all go down together because too many will direct and no single mind can be allowed to control.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction ... nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.