The quote database

Nothing comes unbidden; where the shadow is, there also is the substance.

To be able to do a thing, you must begin to do it, and keep on doing it until the thing is mastered.

If he is perplexed, unhappy, restless, or wretched, let him look to himself, for there and nowhere else is the source of all his trouble.

Well may the boldest fear and the wisest tremble when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country's peace and prosperity, and in some degree the hopes and happiness of the whole human family.

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.

Conscious of my own deficiency, I cannot enter on these duties without great anxiety for the result.

In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously.

A President may sense and proclaim that new spirit, but only a people can provide it.

Your strength can compensate for my weakness, and your wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes.

Every artist does something more than copy Nature; more comes out in his account than goes into the original experience.

There is the standing danger that the material of formal instruction will be merely the subject matter of the schools, isolated from the subject matter of life-experience.

For he that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary.

Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your indulgence.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that

To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty.

There is no act which more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong sense of individual responsibility than the nomination to employments.

For the first time in our history the person elected to the Vice-Presidency of the United States, by the happening of a contingency provided for in the Constitution, has had devolved upon him the Presidential office.

Have none of my Fellow Creatures an equitable Right to any Part which is called mine?

Running in this Road I found many like myself; and we associated in that which is the reverse of true Friendship.

The concepts of "majority" and "minority" necessarily reflect temporary arrangements and political judgments.

in the exercise of this high power, we must be ever on our guard, lest we erect our prejudices into legal principles

The ostentation of grief is many times more than the grief itself.