The Americans who went to Europe to die are a unique breed.... (They) crossed the seas to a foreign land to fight for a cause which they did not pretend was peculiarly their own, which they knew was the cause of humanity and mankind. These Americans gave the greatest of all gifts, the gift of life and the gift of spirit.

The literary gift is a very dangerous gift to possess if you are not telling the truth, and I would a great deal rather, for my part, have a man stumble in his speech than to feel he was so exceedingly smooth that he had better be watched both day and night.

The use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.

Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little. . . . We must strive for normalcy to reach stability.

The difference between a strong man and a weak one is that the former does not give up after a defeat.

At every crisis in one's life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving.

Today, supremely, it behooves us to remember that a nation shall be saved by the power that sleeps in its own bosom; or by none; shall be renewed in hope, in confidence, in strength by waters welling up from its own sweet, perennial springs. Not from above; not by patronage of its aristocrats. The flower does not bear the root, but the root the flower.