Historical voices

I draw no conclusions, sir, but such as are naturally deduced from known and visible facts, and such as will always have a being while the facts which produced them remain unaltered.

An army in a city can never be a conquering army.

We know, sir, what we are about, what we have to do, and how to do it.

It was the close struggle of life and death, the line of invisible division; and on which the unabated fortitude of a Washington prevailed, and saved the spark that has since blazed in the north with unrivalled lustre.

It has all the tracings and colorings of horror and despair; and excites the most swelling emotions of gratitude by exhibiting the miseries we are so graciously preserved from.

In that quarter America has surprised the world, and laid the foundation of this year's glory.

However confident you might be on your first arrival, the result of the year 1776 gave you some idea of the difficulty, if not impossibility of conquest.

To doubt now would be a species of infidelity, and to forget the instruments which saved us then would be ingratitude.

When I look back on the gloomy days of last winter, and see America suspended by a thread, I feel a triumph of joy at the recollection of her delivery, and a reverence for the characters which snatched her from destruction.

The conquest of the Hessians at Trenton, by the remains of a retreating army, which but a few days before you affected to despise, is an instance of their heroic perseverance very seldom to be met with.

Even the most cowardly Tory allowed, that, could she withstand the shock of that summer, her independence would be past a doubt.

The utmost hope of America in the year 1776, reached no higher than that she might not then be conquered.

That period is now arrived, and the long doubtful winter of war is changing to the sweeter prospects of victory and joy.

It is dangerous to make men familiar with a crime which they may afterwards practise to much greater advantage against those who first taught them.

It is generated in the dust and sweepings of other vices, and is of such a hateful figure that all the rest conspire to disown it.

In the list of human vices we find some of such a refined constitution, they cannot be carried into practice without seducing some virtue to their assistance; but meanness has neither alliance nor apology.

Mankind are not universally agreed in their determination of right and wrong; but there are certain actions which the consent of all nations and individuals has branded with the unchangeable name of meanness.

For he who survives his reputation, lives out of despite of himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.

Death is not the monarch of the dead, but of the dying.

The usual honors of the dead, to be sure, are not sufficiently sublime to escort a character like you to the republic of dust and ashes; for however men may differ in their ideas of grandeur or of government here, the grave is nevertheless…

TO argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

We are not moved by the gloomy smile of a worthless king, but by the ardent glow of generous patriotism.

We know the cause which we are engaged in, and though a passionate fondness for it may make us grieve at every injury which threatens it, yet, when the moment of concern is over, the determination to duty returns.