I am very glad indeed to see you to-night, and yet I will not say I thank you for this call, but I do most sincerely thank Almighty God for the occasion on which you have called.

Lincoln called laughter "the joyous, beautiful, universal evergreen of life."

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.

Politics, as a trade, finds most and leaves nearly all dishonest.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path ... It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts for distinction.

...I do not mean to say that this general government is charged with the duty of redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the world; but I do think that it is charged with the duty of preventing and redressing all wrongs which are wrongs to itself.

I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this his almost chosen people.