Orators of the American Revolution

Front Cover
Baker and Scribner, 1848 - Orators - 456 pages

From inside the book

Contents

IX
233

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 167 - Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume ; And we are weeds without it. All constraint, Except what wisdom lays on evil men, Is evil : hurts the faculties, impedes Their progress in the road of science, blinds The eyesight of Discovery ; and begets, In those that suffer it, a sordid mind, Bestial, a meager intellect. unfit To be the tenant of man's noble form.
Page 21 - It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter,* that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Page 58 - We must be unanimous ; there must be no pulling different ways: we must all hang together." Franklin replied, " Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.
Page 285 - THE SACRED RIGHTS OF MANKIND ARE NOT TO BE RUMMAGED FOR AMONG OLD PARCHMENTS OR MUSTY RECORDS. THEY ARE WRITTEN, AS WITH A SUNBEAM, IN THE WHOLE VOLUME OF HUMAN NATURE, BY THE HAND OF THE DIVINITY ITSELF ; AND CAN NEVER BE ERASED OR OBSCURED BY MORTAL POWER.
Page 27 - ... apostatize, yet the cause will live; and though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, will not die with the prophet, but survive him.
Page 36 - Straits, — whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold ; that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the South. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and restingplace in the progress of their victorious industry.
Page 176 - You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory.
Page 28 - ... proud of being descended from men, who have set the world an example of founding civil institutions on the great and united principles of human freedom and human knowledge. To us, their children, the story of their labors and sufferings can never be without its interest.
Page 115 - No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of the own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion.
Page 17 - WE were now treading that illustrious Island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of religion.

Bibliographic information