Adlai Stevenson

In the presence of such majestic power we can only stand awed and silent.

Its effects can be felt; it influences our actions; it controls and possesses us; but to define it, or tell what it is, or how it produces these effects, is as far beyond our power as to imprison the sunbeam.

There is, perhaps, no reputation that can be achieved amongst men that is so transitory, so evanescent, as that of a great advocate.

He was a great lawyer in the highest and largest sense of the term --great in the extent and thoroughness of his legal learning, in the vigor and acuteness of his reasoning, and in the power of his eloquence.

For while he trod with firm and steady steps the path of logic, his vivid imagination was constantly scattering on each side flowers of fragrant beauty, to the wonder and delight of all who heard him.

I have rarely heard a man whose efforts so constantly riveted the attention from the beginning to the close of his discourse.

He was a gentleman of the old school, a politician from the beginning, of inflexible integrity and an earnestness of purpose that knew no shadow of turning.

In victory or defeat, in office or out, he was true to his own self and to his ideals.

Take him all in all, we may not look upon his like again.

One sentence of the memorable message is worthy of remembrance by the oncoming generations: "The Monroe Doctrine was intended to apply to every stage of our national life, and cannot become obsolete while our Republic endures.

And yet history will truly say of him that, while just to other Governments, no President has more firmly maintained the rights of his own.

Yes, my friends, for seventy long years, amid appalling difficulties and dangers, I have waged an incessant warfare against the world, the flesh, the devil, and all the other enemies of the Democratic party!