As a general principle, I should put it that a man's country is where the things he loves are most respected. Circumstances may have prevented his ever setting foot there, but it remains his country.
Interpretation
A person's true homeland is defined by the values and loves they cherish, not by physical location.
This quote emphasizes that one's sense of belonging and identity is shaped more by the ideals and affections that one holds dear than by the geographical location they inhabit. Even if circumstances keep someone away from the land of their birth or where they feel most connected, the essence of their identity remains tied to those things they value deeply, making those values the true markers of their 'country.'
In practice
In a speech about immigration and identity, one might use this quote to highlight how love for one's culture transcends borders.
There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.
Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.
The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
Another strange notion pervading whole peoples is that the State has money of its own; and nowhere is this absurdity more firmly fixed than in America. The State has no money. It produces nothing. It existence is purely parasitic, maintained by taxation; that is to say, by forced levies on the production of others. 'Government money,' of which one hears so much nowadays, does not exist; there is no such thing.
It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own.
The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery.
There can be but one will the master in our salvation, but that shall never be the will of man, but of God; therefore man must be saved by grace.
I think the greatest weakness in the church today is that almost no one believes that God invests His power in the Bible. Everyone is looking for power in a program, in a methodology, in a technique, in anything and everything but that in which God has placed itβHis Word. He alone has the power to change lives for eternity, and that power is focused on the Scriptures.
Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined - how is it that this safe return brings such regret?
Time is not a thing, thus nothing which is, and yet it remains constant in its passing away without being something temporal like the beings in time.
Perhaps you know some well-off families who do not seem to suffer from their riches. They do not overeat themselves; they find occupations to keep themselves in health; they do not worry about their position; they put their money into safe investments and are content with a low rate of interest; and they bring up their children to live simply and do useful work. But this means that they do not live like rich people at all, and might therefore just as well have ordinary incomes.
My philosophy has always been that I can sell chinos and T-shirts and $5,000 gowns - they just have to be the best of what they are.
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