I found a kind of party terrorism pervading and oppressing the minds of our best men.

No man can make a speech alone. It is the great human power that strikes up from a thousand minds that acts upon him, and makes the speech.

[I]t would be unjust to our people and dangerous to our institutions to apply any portion of revenues of the nation or of the States to the support of sectarian schools.

The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves.

Commerce links all mankind in one common brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests.

Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool.

Individuals may wear for a time the glory of our institutions, but they carry it not to the grave with them. Like raindrops from heaven, they may pass through the circle of the shining bow and add to its luster; but when they have sunk in the earth again, the proud arch still spans the sky and shines gloriously on.