Historical voices

And, again, by the tariff system the whole revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods, and those chiefly the luxuries and not the necessaries of life.

As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and next, no one left to borrow from, so must it be with a government.

It is a system not only ruinous while it lasts, but one that must soon fail and leave us destitute.

Still, in addition to this there is something so ludicrous in promises of good or threats of evil a great way off as to render the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned into ridicule.

Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are but little regarded even in our own cases, and much less in the cases of others.

Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.

What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, to ask or expect a whole community to rise up and labour for the temporal happiness of others, after themselves shall be consigned to the dust, a majority of which community take no pains…

Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think we are at the same time doing something for ourselves.

Few can be induced to labour exclusively for posterity; and none will do it enthusiastically.

It looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers overboard to lighten the boat for our security, that the noble-minded shrank from the manifest meanness of the thing.

The heart could not throw open its portals to it, the generous man could not adopt it--it could not mix with his blood.

We could not love the man who taught it--we could not hear him with patience.

There is in this something so repugnant to humanity, so uncharitable, so cold-blooded and feelingless, that it never did, nor never can enlist the enthusiasm of a popular cause.

Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interests....

Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what you will, is the great high-road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if…

If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.

It is an old and a true maxim "that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall." So with men.

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted.

Far around as human breath has ever blown, he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons, and our friends prostrate in the chains of moral death....

He ever seems to have gone forth like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay, if not the first, the fairest born of every family.

What one of us but can call to mind some relative more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity?

The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity.

Indeed I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.

In my judgment, such of us as have never fallen victims have been spared more from the absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have.