The triumph of the Confederacy... would be a victory for the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the sprits of its friends all over the civilized world... [The American Civil War] is destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human affairs.

Is there any moral enormity which might not be justified by imitation of such a Deity?

The great majority of those who speak of perfectibility as a dream, do so because they feel that it is one which would afford them no pleasure if it were realized.

Human beings are no longer born to their place in life...but are free to employ their faculties and such favorable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them as desirable.

It is a law, that every event depends on some law.

Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.

It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine.