Law is nothing else but the best reason of wise men applied for ages to the transactions and business of mankind.

Any society that takes away from those most capable and gives to the least will perish.

I was elected a Captain of Volunteers--a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since.

In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.

I desire to see the time when education, and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry shall become much more general than at present.