From the public-domain record · 81,371 quotes
Founders, statesmen and world leaders — cited from their collected works.
The figures
Such excesses of passionate folly, and unjust as well as unwise resentment, have driven you on, like Pharaoh, to unpitied miseries, and while the importance of the quarrel shall perpetuate your disgrace, the flag of America will carry it…
But entangled in the passion of dispute you see it not as you ought, and form opinions thereon which suit with no interest but your own.
Had France acted towards her colonies as you have done, you would have branded her with every epithet of abhorrence; and had you, like her, stepped in to succor a struggling people, all Europe must have echoed with your own applauses.
Make but the case of others your own, and your own theirs, and you will then have a clear idea of the whole.
The policy of Europe, and the propensity there in every mind to curb insulting ambition, and bring cruelty to judgment, are unitedly against you; and where nature and interest reinforce with each other, the compact is too intimate to be…
Nature does not interest herself in cases like yours, but, on the contrary, turns from them with dislike, and abandons them to punishment.
Every thing you suffer you have sought: nay, had you created mischiefs on purpose to inherit them, you could not have secured your title by a firmer deed.
But when their troubles shall become yours, and invasion be transferred upon the invaders, you will have neither their extended wilderness to fly to, their cause to comfort you, nor their hope to rest upon.
Thus familiarized to misfortune, before it arrived, they bore their portion with the less regret: the justness of their cause was a continual source of consolation, and the hope of final victory, which never left them, served to lighten…
They had resolved to abandon their homes, to resign them to destruction, and to seek new settlements rather than submit.
The people of America, by anticipating distress, had fortified their minds against every species you could inflict.
You even enjoyed the storm, by contemplating the difference of conditions, and that which carried sorrow into the breasts of thousands served but to heighten in you a species of tranquil pride.
The misery of others, like a tempestuous night, added to the pleasures of your own security.
To see women and children wandering in the severity of winter, with the broken remains of a well furnished house, and seeking shelter in every crib and hut, were matters that you had no conception of.
You were strangers to the distressing scene of a family in flight, and to the thousand restless cares and tender sorrows that incessantly arose.
You knew not what it was to be alarmed at midnight with an armed enemy in the streets.
Hitherto you have experienced the expenses, but nothing of the miseries of war.
A change of generals, like a change of physicians, served only to keep the flattery alive, and furnish new pretences for new extravagance.
New schemes, like new medicines, have administered fresh hopes, and prolonged the disease instead of curing it.
Like a prodigal lingering in an habitual consumption, you feel the relics of life, and mistake them for recovery.
In short, had you cast about for a plan on purpose to enrich your enemies, you could not have hit upon a better.
The greatness of the deed demands respect; and though you may feel resentment, you are compelled both to wonder and admire.
Unprepared and unarmed, without form or government, she, singly opposed a nation that domineered over half the globe.
