Patriotism! It is used to define so many diversities, to justify so many wrongs, to compass so many ends, that its life is killed out; it becomes a dead word in the vocabulary-a blank counter, to be moved to any part of the game; and that flag which, streaming from the mast-head of our ship of state, striped with martyr-blood, and glistening with the stars of lofty promise, should always indicate our worldwide mission, and the glorious destinies that we carry forward, is bandied about in every selfish skirmish, and held up as the symbol of every political privateer.

No language can express the power, and beauty, and heroism, and majesty of a mother's love. It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over wastes of worldly fortunes sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star.

There are daily martyrdoms occurring of more or less self-abnegation, and of which the world knows nothing.

The child's grief throbs against the round of its little heart as heavily as the man's sorrow, and the one finds as much delight in his kite or drum as the other in striking the springs of enterprise or soaring on the wings of fame.

At the bottom of not a little of the bravery that appears in the world, there lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they have not the courage to face public opinion.

Humanity is so constituted that the basest criminal represents you and me, as well as the most glorious saint that walks on high. We are reflected in all other men; all other men are embodied in us.

There is less misery in being cheated than in that kind of wisdom which perceives, or thinks it perceives, that all mankind are cheats.