For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all.

..remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship.

We are apt to be deluded into false security by political catch-words, devised to flatter rather than instruct.

A noble life crowned with heroic death, rises above and outlives the pride and pomp and glory of the mightiest empire of the earth.

I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.

To all our means of culture is added the powerful incentive to personal ambition, no post of honor is so high but the poorest may hope to reach it.

Talleyrand once said to the first Napoleon that the United States is a giant without bones. Since that time our gristle has been rapidly hardening.