There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope of a serene old age, that no other business or profession can promise.

I can imagine no sweeter way to end one's life than in the quiet of the country, out of the mad race for money, place and power - far from the demands of business - out of the dusty highway where fools struggle and strive for the hollow praise of other fools.

Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great struggle, every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished.

Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and grand, neither is it simply a vine. It is both. Around the oak of truth runs the vine of beauty.

He who refuses to stoop, who cannot be bribed by the promise of success or the fear of failure - who walks the highway of the right, and in disaster stands erect, is the only victor.

If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith.

A prayer that must have a cannon behind it better never be uttered. Forgiveness ought not to go in partnership with shot and shell. Love need not carry knives and revolvers.

What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.

The more liberty you give away the more you will have.

When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called education. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of poverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy.

In spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no love for God.

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.

Every religion in the world has denounced every other religion as a fraud. That proves to me that they all tell the truth - about others.

Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.

Religion is not theory - it is life. It is not intellectual conviction - it is divine humanity, and nothing else.

I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Love's fair realm, husband and wife are king and queen, sceptered and crowned alike, and seated on the self-same throne.

We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.

I say that no man can be greater than the man who bravely and heroically sacrifices his life for the good of others. No man can be greater than the one who meets death face to face, and yet will not shrink from what he believes to be his highest duty.

In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.

A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's night, an inspiration and a prophecy.

The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.

It is hard to conceive of the utter demoralization, of the political blindness and immorality, of the patriotic dishonesty, of the cruelty and degradation of a people who supplemented the incomparable Declaration of Independence with the Fugitive Slave Law.

There can be goodness without much intelligence - but it seems to me that perfect intelligence and perfect goodness must go together.

As long as we can get redress in the courts, as long as the laws shall be honestly administered, as long as honesty and intelligence sit upon the bench, as long as intelligence sits in the chairs of jurors, this country will stand, the law will be enforced, and the law will be respected.

Intelligence, integrity and courage are the great pillars that support the State. Above all, the citizens of a free nation should honor the brave and independent man - the man of stainless integrity, of will and intellectual force.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot.

When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and all their hearers brave and honest thinkers, then - and not until then - will the dream of poet, patriot, philanthropist and philosopher become a real and blessed truth.

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.

They who gain applause and power by pandering to the mistakes, the prejudices and passions of the multitude are the enemies of liberty.

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.

Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.

I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past.

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.

It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.

Roscoe Conkling was a man of superb courage. He not only acted without fear, but he had that fortitude of soul which bears the consequences of the course pursued without complaint.

What is it that distinguishes you and me from the lower animals - from the beasts? More, I say, than anything else, human sympathy - human sympathy.

Character is made of duty and love and sympathy, and, above all, of living and working for others.

We can conceive of eternity because we cannot conceive of a cessation of time. We can conceive of infinite space because we cannot conceive of so much matter that our imagination will not stand upon the farthest star and see infinite space beyond.