The literature of many lands is rich with the tributes that gratitude, admiration and love have paid to the great and honored dead. These tributes disclose the character of nations, the ideals of the human race.
— Robert Green Ingersoll
Custom is a prison, locked and barred by those who long ago were dust, the keys of which are in the keeping of the dead.
They who gain applause and power by pandering to the mistakes, the prejudices and passions of the multitude are the enemies of liberty.
If the government can make money, what on earth does it collect taxes for you and me for? Why don't it make what money it wants, take the taxes out, and give the balance to us?
Happiness is the legal-tender of the soul. Joy is wealth.
Homes make patriots. He who has sat by his own fireside with wife and children will defend it. Few men have been patriotic enough to shoulder a musket in defense of a boarding house. The prosperity and glory of our country depend upon the number of people who are the owners of homes.
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.
The great poets have sympathized with the people. They have uttered in all ages the human cry. Unbought by gold, unawed by power, they have lifted high the torch that illuminates the world.
The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public.
It always has been and forever will be impossible for slavery or any kind or form of injustice to produce a great poet.
The American people do not like neutrality. They would rather a man were on the wrong side than on neither.
There may be another life, and if there is, the best way to prepare for it is by making somebody happy in this.
The government, in my judgment, cannot create money; the government can give its note, like an individual, and the prospect of its being paid determines its value.
The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar - his life has been a success.
Perish the infamous doctrine that man can have property in man. Let us resent with indignation every effort to put a chain upon our minds.
You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture, nor by social ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by these and what you have done. You can make hypocrites by the million.
The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The greatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words. They outlast all others.
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.
Nothing is more despicable than to reach fame by crawling, position by cringing.
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.
When you go home, fill the house with joy so that the light of it will stream out the windows and doors and illuminate even the darkness. It is just as easy that way as any in the world.
Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world, and love is the only thing that will pay ten percent, to borrower and lender both.
Whoever labors for the happiness of those he loves elevates himself, no matter whether he works in the dreary shop or the perfumed field.
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.
If the guardians of society, the protectors of 'young persons,' could have had their way, we should have known nothing of Byron or Shelley. The voices that thrill the world would now be silent.
No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all.
I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past.
There are times when a falsehood well told bridges over quite a difficulty, but in the long run, you had better tell the truth, even if you swim the creek.
Most people are Democrats because they hate something; most people are Republicans because they love something.
The doctrine of immortality rests upon human affection. We love; therefore, we wish to live.
The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have is to so live and so improve himself in heart and brain as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man.
Our fathers worshiped the golden calf. The worst you can say of an American now is, he worships the gold of the calf.
I simply claim that what ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber.
The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a statue - or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and impoverishes.
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.
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.
In the grave should be buried the prejudices and passions born of conflict. Charity should hold the scales in which are weighed the deeds of men.
A good way to make children tell the truth is to tell it yourself. Keep your word with your child the same as you would with your banker.
I want to tell you this: you cannot get the robe of hypocrisy on you so thick that the sharp eye of childhood will not see through every veil.
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.
Many Americans do not understand that the officers of the government are simply the servants of the people.
In every age in which books have been produced, the governing class, the respectable, have been opposed to the works of real genius.
Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion - the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song.
Neutrality is generally used as a mask to hide unusual bitterness. Sometimes it hides what it is - nothing. It always stands for hollowness of head or bitterness of heart, sometimes for both.
I hope there is another life, for I would like to see how things come out in this world when I am dead.
All the men of wealth should remember that everybody in a community has got, in some way, to be supported. I want to see them so that they can support themselves by their own labor.
Whoever marries simply for himself will make a mistake; but whoever loves a woman so well that he says, 'I will make her happy,' makes no mistake. And so with the woman who says, 'I will make him happy.'
Every good government is made up of good families. The unit of good government is the family, and anything that tends to destroy the family is perfectly devilish and infamous.
I say, let us think. Let each one express his thought. Let us become investigators, not followers, not cringers and crawlers. If there is in Heaven an infinite being, he never will be satisfied with the worship of cowards and hypocrites.
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.
