Liber

“ The ordinary conception of liberty, as a capacity bestowed upon a given or created being, of choosing and following any one of two or more courses of action, is no conception at all, but is an inconceivability. ”

“ What can repress the ardor, the energy in the American mind? a mind that is the peculiar and legitimate foundation of Liberty—and what can, or should check the spirit of enterprise the necessary offspring of that mind? ”

“ The love of freedom is in every human heart. Again recall the words of the Declaration of Independence—“all men are created equal ... they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”, among which is liberty. ”

“ Come the liberty that shall strike off every chain, not only of iron, and iron-law, but of painful constriction, of fear, of enslaving passion, of mad self-will; the liberty of perfect truth and love, of holy faith and glad obedience! ”

“ Liberty demands mind, intellect, knowledge, large and varied with virtue pure and lofty in all her sons; and with these she insures success and victory over all her foes, hut when these are wanting she spreads her wings, like the eagle, and flies to her native heaven. ”

“ Liberty is that spirit which, in politics, repudiates absolutism, respects the minority, and weighs the protest of a single conscience with care; which, in jurisprudence, favours the common, limits the canon, and rejects the civil, law, suspecting those iron maxims to be the weapons of imperial wrong; that spirit which, in the judgment seat, assumes innocency and gives the benefit of the doubt; which, in social life, sides with weakness against strength, with the outcast against the oppressor; and which, in all conflicts of authority against reason, inclines to follow the inner guide. ”

“ The imposing terms of liberty, justice, public good, man's dignity, are so admirable, and besides so vague! What heart can refuse to cherish them, and what intelligence can foretell their innumerable applications? ”

“ Yet most of us have done it, contemplate doing it, or at least go so far as to wish that we might allow ourselves the liberty. Perhaps, if that liberty were universally granted, we should desire it less. ”

“ Great—unspeakably great—is the Will! the free Soul of man! At its greatest, understanding and obeying the laws, it can then, and then only, maintain true liberty. For there is to the highest, that law as absolute as any—more absolute than any—the Law of Liberty. ”

“ Having a false and absurd notion as to what liberty is, either they pervert the very idea of freedom, or they extend it at their pleasure to many things in respect of which man cannot rightly be regarded as free. ”

“ I know there have been some right true, noble souls, in whom the love of liberty has meant the love of right, and the desire that every human brother should have what rightly belongs to him. It is not my liberty, nor our liberty, but the principle of liberty itself, that they strove for. ”

“ Liberty of will is likened by Jeremy Taylor to the motion of a magnetic needle towards the north, full of trembling and uncertainty till it be fixed in the beloved point: “it wavers as long as it is free, and is at rest when it can choose no more.” What is liberty? ”

“ Standing in the presence of the Unknown, all have the same right to think, and all are equally interested in the great questions of origin and destiny. All I claim, all I plead for, is liberty thought and expression. ”

“ He sees instincts are better and stronger than so-called ‘principles.’ He sees in the hour of need what are called ‘rights’ laughed at, ‘freedom,’ the liberty to do what one pleases, trampled on, the claims of the individual trodden under foot, and theories burst like cobwebs. ”

“ I find that not only civilization, but liberty, has a prodigious effect upon human life. It is, as it were, by the instinct of self-preservation that liberty is so passionately desired by the multitude. ”

“ Rather, it is the other way: we can love, be merciful, tender, compassionate, therefore we ought. Liberty itself is a law to the free, the source of moral obligation, the gift of Him "whose service is perfect freedom." ”

“ What application, then, has it to the subjects we are engaged in discussing; and, in particular, what assistance does it afford us in clearing up the great fact of Human Liberty—that key-stone in the arch of humanity, without which all our peculiar attributes, morality, responsibility, law, and justice, loosened from their mighty span, would fall from their places, and disappear for ever in the blind abysses of Necessity? ”

“ Liberty is a fact that the consciousness of each of us attests to him, which, moreover, is enveloped in all the moral phenomena that we have signalized, in moral approbation and disapprobation, in esteem and contempt, in admiration and indignation, in merit and demerit, in punishment and reward. ”

“ And now, declaring my belief in Liberty and Equality as the God-given birthright of all men, let me say, in the same spirit, if this be an error, it is an error I love,—if this be a fault, it is a fault I shall be slow to renounce,—if this be an illusion, it is an illusion which I pray may wrap the world in its angelic forms. ”

“ Seeing, however, that many cling so obstinately to their own opinion in this matter as to imagine these modern liberties, cankered as they are, to be the greatest glory of our ago, and the very basis of civil life, without which no perfect government can be conceived. ”

“ With all these, the greatest possible latitude in regard to morals, and all the liberty we desire. Now, if society gives us all these, and you must admit that it does, has it not done its entire duty? ”

“ The gaze of the sons of liberty, everywhere, is upon us, anxiously, intently, upon us. They may see us fall in the struggle for our Constitution and government, but Heaven forbid that they should see us recreant. ”

“ Accursed, then, be the hand that aims a blow at the foundations of our fair fabric of Liberty; thrice accursed he whose voice is raised in the promulgation of those pernicious doctrines whose end is to lead a great people astray. ”

“ From this demonstration to-day, and the acclaim wafted to us from the Free States, it is easy to see that the great cause of Liberty, to which we now dedicate ourselves, will sweep the heart-strings of the people. ”

“ Whether the sacred name of liberty ever set his soul aglow with a generous fire; whether he had more than the most elementary ideas of love, friendship, patriotism, religion,—things which are half, and the better half, of life to us ”

“ We refer liberty, therefore, to the noblest principle, to the action of the intelligence182; we regard as free only the decisions whose principle it is, and as voluntary, only the desires it inspires. ”

“ We see, in the far off, distant and misty, political landscape of our world, as we ascend the now broad and tranquil stream of Liberty—here and there a few bright and sunny spots, green and redolescent, sparkling in their isolated beauty, in the moral darkness and waste around them, and showing to the eye of the beholder that here the waters of life are silently flowing. ”

“ At present we have to note that our studies of liberty, in all its phases and applications, have forced us again and again to observe that there is no real liberty but that which is an affair of history, law, and institutions. ”

“ Lastly, we may ask: To what purpose is our free-will given us, if all souls, good and bad alike, users and abusers of the liberty they had on earth, enter into their long home all of one uniform and spotless hue? ”

“ Aim at knowledge deep and varied: cherish sentiments of the largest and loftiest liberality; the character of the age demands it, Liberty commands it; and God and man are honored and glorified by it. And let your many privileges—great and important as many stimulate you to the highest and noblest resolves while they fill you with gratitude to your God, love for your country, and devotion to the thrice sacred cause of Liberty. ”

“ The first sophism consists in asking ourselves if there is such a thing as duty in the abstract, or if this word does not cover one of the numerous illusions of our forefathers. For duty, in truth, supposes liberty, and the question of liberty leads us into metaphysics. How can we talk of liberty so long as this grave problem of free-will is not solved? ”

“ Not seeing there that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks, among them, like something that is more noble and liberal. ”

“ Let your children lisp of Freedom in the cradle—let your death-bed be the school for fresh exertions—let every street of the city, and field of the country, be connected with thoughts, which liberty has made holy. Be warm in your cause, yet rational, and charitable, and tolerant—never let the oppressor grind you into justifying his conduct by imitating his meanness. ”

“ Liberty, justice, equality before the law, and self-government, are the normal dogmas of our political creed; to renounce them were to stultify ourselves. They are cornerstones in the temple we are building for the refuge of men ”

“ Our general proposition in considering the great problem of Liberty, is that, under the dispensation of Grace, the people are the legitimate recipients and inheritors of all power, right authority and sovereignty. This great fact, we affirm, christianity. ”

“ But the history of liberty—the history of men struggling to be free—the history of men who have acquired and are exercising their freedom—the history of those great movements in the world, by which liberty has been established and perpetuated, forms a subject which we cannot contemplate too closely. ”

“ Liberty for each, for all, forever! ”

“ For I suppose it will be agreed, that if ever mankind do that which claims the name and rank of virtue, it is when they freely offer up their lives for their country, and for a cause which, whatever may be their misjudgment in the case, they believe to be the cause of liberty. ”

“ It has been said, that the liberty for which I have pleaded, is “a right or power in every one [11] to act as he likes without any restraint.”—However unfairly this representation has been given of my account of liberty, I am ready to adopt it, provided it is understood with a few limitations.—Moral Liberty, in particular, cannot be better defined than by calling it “a power in every one to do as he likes.” ”

“ They just loved liberty and toleration and truth, and hoped for more of it, for more liberty, for a more perfect toleration, for more truth, and they put their lives, their labors, at the disposition of those loves without the least vision of this republic, or of what was going to come out of their industry, their devotion, their dangerous and exposed lives. ”

“ The Liber Diurnus contained the papal profession of faith. "As Pope Honorius is condemned in the profession of faith of the new Pontiffs," says Cardinal Bona, "it is better not to publish this work." "That is to say" exclaims Gratry, "behold a fact which overwhelms us. Let us prevent its being known."
The maxim that truth may be suppressed in the interests of religion roused Gratry's boundless indignation. ”

“ But on the other hand, every one of us has to admit that the experience of life has confirmed the belief in our freedom which for a moment had been shaken by doubt and perplexity; and that faith, instinctive and incoercible, outlives every time the onslaughts of negation.
By liberty we mean that power peculiar to man by which he moulds himself into his actual being and originates the series of facts in which every one of his actions becomes manifest. ”