A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.

There is a class of people who seem to think that if a man should fall overboard into the sea with a Bible in his pocket it would hardly be possible to drown. I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.