Great Throughts Treasury

"Grand and manifold as were its phases, there is yet no difficulty in understanding the character of Washington. He was no Veiled Prophet. He never acted a part. Simple, natural, and unaffected, his life lies before us - a fair and open manuscript. He disdained the arts which wrap power in mystery in order to magnify it. He practiced the profound diplomacy of truthful speech - the consummate tact of direct attention. Looking ever to the All-Wise Disposer of events, he relied on that Providence which helps men by giving them high hearts and hopes to help themselves with the means which their Creator has put at their service. There was no infirmity in his conduct over which charity must fling its veil; no taint of selfishness from which purity averts her gaze; no dark recess of intrigue that must be lit up with colored panegyric; no subterranean passage to be trod in trembling, lest there be stirred the ghost of a buried crime." - John W. Daniel, fully John Warwick Daniel

"The animosity which Nations reciprocally entertain is nothing more than what the policy of their Governments excites to keep up the spirit of the system. Each Government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue, and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective Nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of Man, but through the medium of a false system of Government." - Thomas Paine

"Error always addresses the passions and prejudices; truth scorns such mean intrigue, and only addresses the understanding and the conscience." - Azel Backus

"Our revolution has made me feel the full force of the axiom that history is fiction and I am convinced that chance and intrigue have produced more heroes than genius and virtue." - Maximilien Robespierre, fully Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre

"A great scientist once said that genius consists not in making great discoveries but in seeing the connection between small discoveries." - Walker Percy

"Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, when memory plays an old tune on the heart." - Eliza Cook