I shall look for whatever success may attend my public service; and knowing that "except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain," with fervent supplications for His favor, to His overruling providence I commit with humble but fearless confidence my own fate and the future destinies of my country.

I would much rather be found guilty of making a serious mistake in judgment, than to be accused of being even a little bit insincere.

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

Find a mission that you can give yourself over to and then spend your days moving that mission forward. Man is made so that when anything fires his soul the impossibilities vanish. The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.

The public history of all countries, and all ages, is but a sort of mask, richly colored. The interior working of the machinery must be foul.

America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government.

Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union.