The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.

...it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best-regulated administration of slavery.

Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good.

People who hate trouble generally get a good deal of it.

Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow.

The pain of discipline is short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal.

Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!

There is more done with pens than with swords.

Friendships are discovered rather than made.

Common sense is seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be.

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.

It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.

Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

God has so made the mind of man that a peculiar deliciousness resides in the fruits of personal industry.

The distemper of which, as a community, we are sick, should be considered rather as a moral than a political malady.

Can one serve God and one's nation in parliament?

Can you tell a plain man the road to heaven? Certainly, turn at once to the right, and then go straight forward.

The first years in Parliament I did nothing - nothing to any purpose. My distinction was my darling object.