Beavers build houses; but they build them in nowise differently, or better now, than they did, five thousand years ago. Ants, and honey-bees, provide food for winter; but just in the same way they did, when Solomon referred the sluggard to them as patterns of prudence. Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship.

Let reverence for the laws . . . become the political religion of the nation.

War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.

There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave in not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

But let the past as nothing be. For the future my view is that the fight must go on.