Various

“ The record of the tribe is in its enduring literature. The magic of literature lies in the words, and not in any man. Witness, a thousand excellent, strenuous words can leave us quite cold or put us to sleep, whereas a bare half-hundred words breathed upon by some man in his agony, or in his exaltation, or in his idleness, ten generations ago, can still lead a whole nation into and out of captivity, can open to us the doors of three worlds, or stir us so intolerably that we can scarcely abide to look at our own souls. ”

“ Clara, Manuel, and Felipe did the same instinctively. They all stretched out their hands to him as to one who was to save their family from oblivion; they seemed to repeat their father's words—"My son, hast thou lost the energy, the true chivalry of Spain? How long wilt thou leave thy father on his knees? What right hast thou to think of thine own life and its suffering? Madame, is this a son of mine?" continued the old man, turning to his wife.
"He consents," cried she in despair. She saw a movement in Juanito's eyelids, and she alone understood its meaning. ”

“ I trust that love for your fatherland and your earnest desire to serve it will inspire and unite you. I shall keep inviolate the institutions which I have granted, with the firm assurance that you will devote all your strength to the service of your country, and especially to the needs of the peasantry, which are so close to my heart, and to the education of the people and their economical welfare, remembering that to the dignity and prosperity of the state not only freedom but order founded upon justice is necessary. ”

“ Of this great and wonderful sphere, which, fashioned by the hand of God, and upheld by His power, is rolling through the heavens, a part is his—his from the center to the sky! It is the space on which the generation before moved in its round of duties, and he feels himself connected by a visible link with those who follow him, and to whom he is to transmit a home. ”

“ You stand for a great truth every time you put it before your people that we are not our own, but that we belong to each other; that we are all children of one household; that we belong to the family and the family belongs to us; that the assets of the family are the joint property of all the children; and that any man, rich or poor, who treats his particular holdings, large or small, as though they were not in the truest sense a part of the common holdings of the entire household is a renegade and a traitor to the household. ”

“ But when the question is of words—words that may become alive and walk up and down in the hearts of the hearers—it is then that this world of ours, which is disposed to take an interest in the future, feels instinctively that it is better that a thousand innocent people should be punished than that one guilty word should be preserved, carrying that which is an untrue tale of the tribe. ”

“ It is to live long, long days—and life is made up of days. It is to live immured, baffled, impotent, all God's world shut out. It is to sit helpless, defrauded, while your spirit strains and tugs at its fetters and your shoulders ache for the burden they are denied, the rightful burden of labor. ”

“ Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other.
They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? ”

“ These are the feelings of the owners of the soil. Words cannot paint them—gold cannot buy them; they flow out of the deepest fountains of the heart; they are the very life-springs of a fresh, healthy, and generous national character. ”

“ The king, with his rapid stride, had already traversed more than two-thirds of the corridor. The count and the custodian followed closely in his wake, the doctor lagging somewhat in the rear, divided between his fear of being left alone and his dread of the unknown dangers he might incur in pursuing an adventure which began so inauspiciously.
"Go no farther, sire," implored the custodian. "On my soul, there is witchcraft within. At this hour, since the death of your gracious consort, the queen, it is said she haunts this corridor. God grant us protection!" ”

“ During the last hundred and fifty years we have become a race of dictionary-worshipers, and we have gone so far in our blind, unreasonable subserviency to an artificial standard that the time has come for a reaction. We need to reconquer and assert for ourselves something of that liberty which Shakespeare and Milton enjoyed. We need to claim the natural right of every living language to grow and change to suit the convenience of those who use it. ”

“ It is a difficult problem, though, simply because the Indian character and tradition are so different from the dominant type of the white man, and thus so difficult of assimilation. During all the centuries of our existence as a people we have been accustomed to live under a system of pure Socialism. Every Indian fought and accumulated property for his tribe, not for himself. It was the tribal, not the individual, welfare that engrossed him. But the white man's world is different, and the Indian must undergo a fundamental change in order to adapt himself to it. ”

“ If any people in the world had an ideal system of spelling, we might go to them and find out how long it takes their children to learn spelling. But there is no such people; and so we are forced back upon such rough and general statements—perfectly true in themselves—as that German and Italian children learn to spell much more easily and quickly than do our own children.
Meanwhile, it is hardly fair to take as one term of comparison an ideal condition which never existed and never will exist. An alphabet must always be a rough instrument of practical convenience. ”

“ To lovers, I devise their imaginary world with whatever they may need, as the stars of the sky, the red roses by the wall, the bloom of the hawthorn, the sweet strains of music, and aught else they may desire to figure to each other the lastingness and beauty of their love. ”

“ Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but, as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! ”

“ If we wish to be free; if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending; if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained—we must fight!—I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms, and to the God of hosts, is all that is left us. ”

“ Brother—You stand in the moccasins of the great chief, you speak the words of a mighty nation, and your talk is long. My people are small; their shadow scarcely reaches to your knee; they are scattered and gone; when I shout I hear my voice in the depths of the woods, but no answering shout comes back. ”

“ He is afraid of writing. When he speaks he knows what he says; the Great Spirit hears him. Writing is the invention of the pale faces; it gives birth to error and to feuds. The Great Spirit talks—we hear him in the thunder—in the rushing winds and the mighty waters—but he never writes. ”

“ We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? ”

“ Speaking of the changed position of the Indians, he said recently, as quoted by the New York Tribune:
The Indian has long been the "ward" of the government. Our statesmen have found this to be a mistake, for it relieves him of all responsibility of providing for himself or of taking care of himself. This policy was found to pauperize him and to unfit him for the competitions of civilized life. In fact it left him as much of a heathen as when our forefathers first discovered him, wandering in the woods or over prairies, the monarch of all he surveyed. ”

“ Every home has its chess-board at which Darby and Joan while away the winter evenings before the fire, or place it upon a table in the garden in summer-time. In fact, chess is familiar to every inhabitant from the time they leave the cradle. Every one talks chess and thinks chess.
Chess-boards are everywhere. You may rest your elbow on one while you sip your beer at an old-fashioned inn, which is itself called "The Chess-Board," and there, if your quiet and subdued manner makes you appear worthy of the honor, the landlord will show you the set of chess-men presented to the inhabitants in 1650. ”

“ Even to-day, when all is done, those who have done it must wait until all has been said by the masterless man with the words. It is certain that the overwhelming bulk of those words will perish in the future as they have perished in the past; it is true that a minute fraction will continue to exist, and by the light of these words, and by that light only, will our children be able to judge of the phases of our generation. Now, we desire beyond all things to stand well with our children, but when our story comes to be told we do not know who will have the telling of it. ”

“ Helen Keller, the marvelous deaf and blind girl, whose life would be pathetic, were it not so great a triumph over the limitations of silence and darkness, keeps close to her fellows through the sense of touch. ”

“ And again: "Slowly have I climbed from the bottom of life to its surface, and on my way I have watched everything with the greedy eyes of a scout going to the promised land." This is the man who said at a dinner in New York:
I come to America expecting to find true and warm sympathizers among the American people for my suffering countrymen, who are fighting so hard and bearing so bravely their martyrdom for freedom. ”

“ If a tinker in Bedford jail, if a pamphleteering shopkeeper pilloried in London, if a muzzy Scotsman, if a despised German Jew, or a condemned French thief, or an English admiralty official with a taste for letters can be miraculously afflicted with the magic of the necessary words, why not any man at any time? ”

“ Thus began the public life of a man whose youth had been most unpromising in its slovenliness and laziness, who had failed at farming and at business, and who had succeeded at law only after a dubious beginning which was turned into triumph by a quite unlooked-for burst of eloquence. ”

“ Do you realize that your individual possession in art is as broad as art itself? If not, you are refusing man's free gift to man. It is easy for almost any man or woman to be rich; the only thing that is hard is to learn to know real gold when you see it.
The most sensible will ever written was made by an insane man. He was Charles Lounsberry, once a prominent member of the Chicago bar, who in his later years lost his mind and was committed to the Cook County Asylum, at Dunning, where he died penniless. ”

“ Strike with hand of fire, O weird musician, thy harp strung with Apollo's golden hair, fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering 'mid vine-clad hills. But know your sweetest strains are discords all, compared with childhood's happy laugh—the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy. ”

“ All eyes were turned toward the castle; the noble family was seen advancing with incredible dignity. Every face was calm and serene; one man only leant, pale and haggard, on the arm of the priest. Upon this man he lavished all the consolations of religion—upon the only one of them doomed to live. The executioner understood, as did all the rest, that for that day Juanito had undertaken the office himself.
The aged Marquis and his wife, Clara, Mariquita, and their two brothers, came and knelt down a few steps from the fatal spot. Juanito was led thither by the priest. ”

“ Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. ”

“ But if a man, as occasionally happens, makes a book, there is no limit to the criticism that may be directed against it, and it is perfectly as it should be. The world recognizes that little things, like bad law, bad surgery, and bad food, only affect the cheapest commodity that we know about—human life. ”

“ To young men, jointly, I devise and bequeath all boisterous, inspiring sports of rivalry, and I give to them the disdain of weakness and undaunted confidence in their own strength. Though they are rude, I leave to them the power to make lasting friendships, and of possessing companions, and to them exclusively, I give all merry songs and brave choruses to sing with lusty voices. ”