Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. And to be steady on all battlefields beside is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point. My father was a Republican, and his father was a Republican. When the great oak is straining in the wind, the boughs drink in new beauty, and the trunk sends down a deeper root on the windward side. Only the soul that knows the mighty grief can know the mighty rapture.
Sorrows come to stretch out spaces in the heart for joy.
A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned. The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.