He had a delightful and original literary quality which, if the lines of his life had been cast amid other scenes than the tempest of a great Revolution and Civil War, might have made him a dreamer like Montaigne; and a chivalrous quality that might have made him a companion of Athos and D'Artagnan.
Hoar describes the literary and chivalrous qualities of a historical figure, suggesting how different circumstances could have shaped their life.
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We are here in the sweet silence of a summer morning, eighteen hundred years after such a scene, and able mentally to catch some glimpse of it; some echo of the storm that has left behind it so ineffaceable a mark.
The language Statius uses is more simple than mine; but this is substantially the picture he gives: and I know of nothing that so impresses on the imagination the thunder of the power of the Roman Empire as this creation in the wilderness…
We bring you the heart's love of Boston where you were born, and Worcester where you took the early vows you have kept so well; of Massachusetts who knows she has no worthier son, and of the great and free country to whom you have taught…
We speak of a light that makes darkness visible; and similarly there are sounds that deepen the long intervals of silence with which they alternate.
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