All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess.
President Martin Van Buren’s Inaugural Address (March 4, 1837).
So far as it depends on the course of this government, our relations of good will and friendship will be sedulously cultivated with all nations.
President John Tyler, first annual message to Congress (June 1, 1841).
The strongest of all governments is that which is most free.
William Henry Harrison, letter to Simon Bolivar (September 27, 1829).
Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette — the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.
John Tyler, Message to the House (December 18, 1816), in his early days in politics, before becoming the tenth president of the United States.
And, to speak in general, we can produce no example wherein our fathers got any success by war, or failed of success when without war they committed themselves to God.
Flavius Josephus (A.D. 37–100), De Bello Judaico (The War of the Jews), Book 5, Chapter 9.
In three moments a laborer will remove an obstructing rock, but three moons will pass without two wise men agreeing on the meaning of a single vowel.
Ernest Bramah, in “The Story of Wong Pao and the Minstrel,” Kai Lung’s Golden Hours (1922).
The young have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Wedding Knell” (1837) from Twice Told Tales (1837, 1851).
It is the magician’s bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943).
Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1836 entry, The American Notebooks (1835, 1853).
And all the time — such is the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more “drive,” or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or “creativity.” In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943).