George F. Hoar

He was a good type of the old Massachusetts Federalist,--brave, manly, sincere, of a broad and courageous statesmanship, but distrustful of the people and not understanding their temper.

There was something in the college training of that day, imperfect as were its instruments, and slender as were its resources, from which more intellectual strength in the pupil was begotten than there is in the college training of the…

Where is there to be found to-day at the New England bar or in the New England pulpit a man under thirty of whom it can be said that his place among the great men of his profession is assured?

Edward Everett preached a sermon when he was twenty-four years old before a large audience in the Representatives Chamber at Washington which was heard with breathless silence.

The rough country boy, if he had it in him, came out at his graduation a gentleman in behavior and in character.

Yet, somehow, the graduates of Harvard got a good intellectual training from the University.

He was unquestionably, at the time of his death, the most famous teacher of law in the civilized world.

He was undoubtedly the most learned judge in the United States.

I suppose he would be placed by all our writers of history with great unanimity at the head of American historic investigators.

But the effect of failure is most mischievous.

It is now its policy to select for its service promising youth, in the hope that they will become great.

It was then the policy of the college to call into its service great men who had achieved eminent distinction in the world without.

Making all the allowance for the point of view, and that I was then a youth looking at my elders who had become famous, and that I am now looking as an old man at young men, I still think there can be no comparison between the college…

I cannot better close this imperfect sketch of her life than by giving the whole of it: of no one was it ever more worthily spoken than of her.

She became one of the best Greek scholars in the country, and continued, in her latest years, the habit of reading Homer, the tragedians, and Plato.

If anybody doubt the capacity of the intellect of woman to rival that of man in any calling requiring the highest intellectual capacity, without in the least forfeiting any quality of a delicate womanhood, let him read the "Life of Sarah…

But I think I got more good out of it in learning how the best intelligence of the State of Massachusetts was likely to judge of the questions of morals and duty than I got afterward from my four years in college.

But Robinson was always on the righteous side of any question involving righteousness.

But he added, that if he did write such a treatise, he should sum it up in one sentence: "Never have an ass in the chair.

But when the Free Soil movement came in, he would not flinch or abate a jot in his radical Anti-Slavery principles, which were not very agreeable to the proprietors of the cotton mills in Lowell, who depended both for their material and…

There is no people but will strive to excell in something: what can we excell in if not in holinesse?

I think you establish his legitimacy quite satisfactorily and in any future edition of my Lives of the Chief Justices I shall certainly avail myself of your researches.

His pure and lofty counsel fell unheeded upon the ears of his near neighbors, and the people of Massachusetts did not listen very patiently to lectures on political purity or reform in civil service from New York city.

I think if George Curtis had dwelt almost anywhere but in New York city, he would have been a very powerful influence in the public life of his generation.

I suppose his poems will outlast a great many greater reputations.