A solemn and religious regard to spiritual and eternal things is an indispensable element of all true greatness.

There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.

The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.

If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.

The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.

..if the Northern states refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain can not be broken on one side, and still bind the other side.

There is something on earth greater than arbitrary or despotic power. The lightning has its power, and the whirlwind has its power, and the earthquake has its power; but there is something among men more capable of shaking despotic thrones than lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake, and that is, the excited and aroused indignation of the whole civilized world.