Liberty, with all its drawbacks, is everywhere vastly more attractive to a noble soul than good social order without it, than society like a flock of sheep, or a machine working like a watch. This mechanisin makes of man only a product; liberty makes him the citizen of a better world. 3161 Schiller Essays, Esthetical and Philosophical. On the Sublime. Thou askest me what liberty is. To serve nothing, necessity, no fortunes; to keep Fortune at staff's end. 3162 no Seneca: Works, Epistles. No. 51. (Thomas Lodge, Editor.) Liberty is quite as much a moral as a political growth, the result of free individual action, energy, and independence. 3163 Samuel Smiles: Self-Help. Ch. 1. Liberty is essential to our happiness, and they who resign life itself rather than part with it do only a prudent action; but those who lay it down, and voluntarily expose themselves to death in behalf of their friends and country, do an heroic one. 3164 Sir Richard Steele: The Crisis. Where Liberty is, there Slavery cannot be. Charles Sumner: Speech before the New York Slavery No man ever feels the restraint of law so long as he remains in the sphere of his liberty, a sphere, by the way, always large enough for the full exercise of his powers, and the supply of all his legitimate wants. 3166 Timothy Titcomb (J. G. Holland): Gold-Foil. IV. Perfect Liberty. Perfect love holds the secret of the world's perfect liberty. 3167 Timothy Titcomb (J. G. Holland): Gold-Foil. IV. Perfect Liberty. There is no state of society under heaven, and there can be none, where perfect liberty exists, without an obedience to law so glad and so entire that the restraints of the law are unfelt. 3168 Timothy Titcomb (J. G. Holland): Gold-Foil. IV. Perfect Liberty. Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. 3169 George Washington: Political Maxims. God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it. 3170 Daniel Webster: Speech, United States Senate, 1833-34. The Removal of the Deposits. If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano will break out and flame up to heaven. 3171 Daniel Webster: Address, Charlestown, Mass., June 17, 1825. The Bunker Hill Monument. Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint; the more restraint on others to keep off from us, the inore liberty we have. 3172 Daniel Webster: Speech, May 10, 1847. Dinner of the Charleston (S. C.) Bar. The spirit of liberty is, indeed, a bold and fearless spirit; but it is also a sharp-sighted spirit; it is a cautious, sagacious, discriminating, far-seeing intelligence. It is jealous of encroachment, jealous of power, jealous of man; it demands checks; it seeks for guards; it insists on securities; it entrenches itself behind strong defences, and fortifies itself with all possible care against the assaults of ambition and passion; it does not trust the amiable weaknesses of human nature, and therefore it will not permit power to overstep its prescribed limits, though benevolence, good intent, and patriotic purpose come along with it. Neither does it satisfy itself with flashy and temporary resistance to illegal authority. Far otherwise; it seeks for duration and permanence; it looks before and after, and, building on the experience of ages which are past, it labors diligently for the benefit of ages to come. 3173 Daniel Webster: Speech, United States Senate, May 7, 1834. On the President's Protest. We sell our birthright whenever we sell our liberty for any price of gold or honor. 3174 E. P. Whipple: Outlooks on Society. Literature and Politics. American Principles. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. 3175 Ascribed to Thomas Jefferson: Quoted by Wendell Phillips in his Speech," Public Opinion," Jan. 28, 1852.1 LIBRARIES -see Bibliophilism, Reading. A. Bronson Alcott: Table Talk. I. Learning. 1 In a letter dated April 14, 1879, Mr. Phillips wrote: "Miss Ward asks a question which no scholar has yet been able to answer. 'Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,' has been attributed to Jefferson; but no one has yet found it in his works or elsewhere." A library is but the soul's burial-ground. It is the land of shadows. 3177 Henry Ward Beecher: Star Papers. Oxford, The true university of these days is a collection of books. 3178 Carlyle: Heroes and Hero Worship. The Hero as Man of Letters. Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof, and obtain access for himself and family to some social library. Almost any luxury should be sacrificed to this. 3179 William Ellery Channing: Self-Culture. (Address, Boston, Mass., September, 1838.) A great library contains the diary of the human race. George Dawson: Inaugural Address, Oct. 26, 1866. A library is the strengthener of all that is great in life, and the repeller of what is petty and mean: and half the gossip of society would perish if the books that are truly worth reading were but read. 3181 George Dawson: Inaugural Address, Oct. 26, 1866. Opening of Birmingham Free Reference Library. The great consulting-room of a wise man is a library. 3182 George Dawson: Inaugural Address, Oct. 26, 1866. Opening of Birmingham Free Reference Library. Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. Emerson: Society and Solitude. 3183 Books. He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavor. 3184 William Godwin: The Enquirer. Of an Early Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pin-heads. 3185 Holmes: The Poet at the Breakfast-Table. Ch. 8. I look upon a library as a kind of mental chemist's shop, filled with the crystals of all forms and hues which have come from the union of individual thought with local circumstances or universal principles. 3186 Holmes: The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. Ch. 1. What a place to be in is an old library. It seems as though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage, and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard. 3187 Charles Lamb: Essays of Elia. Oxford in the We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offence to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence: each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silent, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure. 3188 Landor: Imaginary Conversations. Milton and No possession can surpass, or even equal, a good library to the lover of books. Here are treasured up for his daily use and delectation, riches which increase by being consumed, and pleasures which never cloy. 3189 John Alfred Langford: The Praise of Books. A circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. 3190 Sheridan: The Rivals. Act i. Sc. 2. LIFE- -see Art, Bread, Care, Fruitlessness, Purpose, Religion, Time, Wealth. One must have lived greatly whose record would bear the full light of day from beginning to its close. 3191 A. Bronson Alcott: Table Talk. I. Learning. Biography. The best of a true life is its private part. A. Bronson Alcott: Table Talk. I. Learning. The less of routine, the more of life. 3193 A. Bronson Alcott: Table Talk. V. Habits. With temperance, health, cheerfulness, friends, a chosen task, one pays the cheapest fees for living, and may well dispense with other physicians. 3194 A. Bronson Alcott: Table Talk. V. Habits. Rations. Knowledge, love, power, there is the complete life. 3195 Amiel: Journal, April 7, 1851. (Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Translator.) Life passes through us; we do not possess it. 3196 Amiel: Journal, June 23, 1869. (Mrs. Humphrey When life ceases to be a promise it does not cease to be a task; its true name even is trial. 3197 Amiel: Journal, Jan. 29, 1866. (Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Translator.) Our life is twofold. 3198 Auerbach: On the Heights. (Bennett, Translator.) O Life! an age to the miserable, a moment to the happy. 3199 Bacon: Moral and Historical Works. Ornamenta Rationalia. God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how. Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. 3200 Life is a plant that grows out of death. 3201 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up to-morrow. 3202 Henry Ward Beecher: Life Thoughts. Generations are as the days of toilsome mankind; death and birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that summon mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement. 3203 Carlyle: Sartor Resartus. Organic Filaments. One life, - a little gleam of time between two eternities. 3204 Carlyle: Heroes and Hero Worship. The Hero as Man of Letters. Life is a fragment, a moment between two eternities, influenced by all that has preceded, and to influence all that follows. The only way to illumine it is by extent of view. 3205 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Life. Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing, and the overtaking and possessing of a wish discovers the folly of the chase. 3206 Congreve: Love for Love. Act iv. Sc. 20. Life is a rich strain of music suggesting a realm too fair to be. 3207 George William Curtis: Lotus-Eating. Newport. Life is the best thing we can possibly make of it. It is duil and dismal and heavy if a man loses his temper; it is glowing with promise and satisfaction if he is not ashamed of his emotions. 3208 George William Curtis: Lotus-Eating. Saratoga. |