The quote database

They meant that public officers should owe their whole service to the Government and to the people.

he should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves the country best

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

What is done in business must be well done; for it is better to accomplish perfectly a small amount of work, than to half-do ten times as much.

Failure in any good cause is, however, honourable, whilst success in any bad cause is merely infamous.

A man's life is to be measured by what he does in it, and what he feels in it.

A man must have the courage to be himself, and not the shadow or the echo of another.

There is a dignity in the very effort to save with a worthy purpose, even though the attempt should not be crowned with eventual success.

Every man's first duty is, to improve, to educate, and elevate himself--helping forward his brethren at the same time by all reasonable methods.

We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.

It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad.

Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution.

Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character.

our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn

Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us.

Let us strive hardily for success even if by so doing we risk failure, spurning the poorer souls of small endeavor who know neither failure nor success.

In short, all artificial education ought to be an anticipation of natural education.

I have been obliged to content myself through life with saying what I mean in the plainest of plain language, than which, I suppose, there is no habit more ruinous to a man's prospects of advancement.

I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make

Government with insolence is despotism; but when contempt is added it becomes worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery.

The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government.

A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution.