Monuments may be builded to express the affection or pride of friends, or to display their wealth, but they are only valuable for the characters which they perpetuate.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured.

Battles are never the end of war; for the dead must be buried and the cost of the conflict must be paid.

We hold reunions, not for the dead, for there is nothing in all the earth that you and I can do for the dead. They are past our help and past our praise. We can add to them no glory, we can give to them no immortality. They do not need us, but forever and forever more we need them.

The people are responsible for the character of their Congress.

The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.