The presence of the blacks is the greatest evil that threatens the United States. They increase, in the Gulf States, faster than do the whites. They cannot be kept for ever in slavery, since the tendencies of the modern world run strongly the other way. They cannot be absorbed into the white population, for the whites will not intermarry with them, not even in the North where they have been free for two generations. Once freed, they would be more dangerous than now, because they would not long submit to be debarred from political rights. A terrible struggle would ensue.

Life is too short to read inferior books.

If you have enough room for your books, you don't have enough books.

A political career brings out the basest qualities in human nature.

Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.

Medicine, the only profession that labors incessantly to destroy the reason for its own existence.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.