Reform is born of need, not pity.

I have never seen an adequate description anywhere of the amazement, the uncomprehending horror of the bulk of the American people which preceded the firing of that gun at Sumter. Politicians or far-sighted leaders on both sides knew what was coming. And it is they who have written histories of the war. But to the easy-going millions, busied with their farms or shops, the onrushing disaster was as inexplicable as an earthquake. Their protest arose from sea to sea like the clamor of a gigantic hive of frightened bees.

Sitting by the chimney corner as we grow old, the commonest things around us take on live meanings and hint at the difference between these driving times and the calm, slow moving days when we were young.

TO preach a sermon or edit a newspaper were the two things in life which I always felt I could do with credit to myself and benefit to the world, if I only had the chance.

You were only truly patriotic if you had a laborer for a grandfather and were glad of it.

Crime, to the man of the forties, was an alien monstrous terror.

It is a good rule never to see or talk to the man whose words have wrung your heart, or helped it, just as it is wise not to look down too closely at the luminous glow which sometimes shines on your path on a summer night, if you would not see the ugly worm below.