Great Throughts Treasury

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

"Every temptation is an opportunity of our getting nearer to God."

"[On children] Train them to virtue; habituate them to industry, activity, and spirit. Make them consider every vice as shameful and unmanly. Fire them with ambition to be useful. Make them disdain to be destitute of any useful knowledge. Fix their ambition upon great and solid objects, and their contempt upon little, frivolous, and useless ones."

"All great changes are irksome to the human mind, especially those which are attended with great dangers and uncertain effects."

"Life is probation: mortal man was made to solve the solemn problem - right or wrong."

"In what light so ever we regard the Bible, whether with reference to revelation, to history, or to morality, it is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue."

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

"Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air."

"I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."

"We understand now, we've been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were"

"Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish."

"Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation."

"Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel."

"Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order."

"Thus situated, the perilous experiment must be made. Let me make it with full deliberations, and be prepared for the consequences."

"Religious discord has lost her sting; the cumbrous weapons of theological warfare are antiquated: the field of politics supplies the alchymists of our times with materials of more fatal explosion, and the butchers of mankind no longer travel to another world for instruments of cruelty and destruction. Our age is too enlightened to contend upon topics, which concern only the interests of eternity; and men who hold in proper contempt all controversies about trifles, except such as inflame their own passions, have made it a common-place censure against your ancestors, that their zeal was enkindled by subjects of trivial importance; and that however aggrieved by the intolerance of others, they were alike intolerant themselves."

"In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do."

"The great problem of legislation is, so to organize the civil government of a community ... that in the operation of human institutions upon social action, self-love and social may be made the same."

"Among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the human heart, and most highly honorable to the human character, are those of veneration for our forefathers, and of love for our posterity. They form the connecting links between the selfish and the social passions. By the fundamental principle of Christianity, the happiness of the individual is Later-woven, by innumerable and imperceptible ties, with that of his contemporaries: by the power of filial reverence and parental affection, individual existence is extended beyond the limits of individual life, and the happiness of every age is chained in mutual dependence upon that of every other."

"The will of the people is the source and the happiness of the people the end of all legitimate government upon earth."

"The best guarantee against the abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular elections."

"To furnish the means of acquiring knowledge is ... the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon mankind. It prolongs life itself and enlarges the sphere of existence."

"You won't realize the distance you've walked until you take a look around and realize how far you've been."

"A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not."