These families, you know, are our upper crust, not upper ten thousand..

Principles . . . become modified in practice, by facts..

Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind, and of a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs equally to the honest man and to the gen….

I can't see no great difference atween givin' up territory afore a war, out of a dread of war, and givin' it up after a war, because we can't help it….

Superstition is a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean..

All greatness of character is dependent on individuality..

The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms..

We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true; though happily for human nature, gleam….

History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness..

Friendship that flows from the heart cannot be frozen by adversity, as the water that flows from the spring cannogt congeal in winter..

At no period of the naval history of the world, is it probable that Marines were more important than during the War of the Revolution..

I do not pretend that all that white men do is properly Christianized..

A soul,--a spark of the never-dying flame that separates man from all the other beings of earth..

Property is desirable as the ground work of moral independence, as a means of improving the faculties, and of doing good to others, and as the agent ….

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party..

Contact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed..

The sight of a coward's blood can never make a warrior tremble..

The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice with indifference..

All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around hi….

How easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and….

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny..