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| Speech in the Senate On Anti-Slavery Petitions |
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| The peculiar institution of the South... is pronounced to be sinful and odious in the sight of God and man; and this with a systematic design of rendering us hateful in the eyes of the world... |
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| Speech in the Senate on AntiSlavery Petitions - John Calhoun |
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| yet, we, the representatives of twelve of these sovereign States against whom this deadly war is waged, are expected to sit here in silence, hearing ourselves and our constituents day after day denounced, without uttering a word |
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| Speech in the Senate on AntiSlavery Petitions - John C Calhoun |
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| If we concede an inch, concession would follow concession - compromise would follow compromise, until our ranks would be so broken that effectual resistance would be impossible |
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| Speech in the Senate on AntiSlavery Petitions - John C Calhoun |
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| As widely as this incendiary spirit has spread, it has not yet infected this body, or the great mass of the intelligent and business portion of the North; but unless it be speedily stopped, it will spread and work upwards till it brings the two great sections of the Union into deadly conflict. |
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| Speech in the Senate on AntiSlavery Petitions - John Calhoun |
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| It is impossible under the deadly hatred which must spring up between the two great sections, if the present causes are permitted to operate unchecked, that we should continue under the same political system. |
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| Speech in the Senate on AntiSlavery Petitions - John Calhoun |
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| I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to be to both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolition. |
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| Speech in the Senate on AntiSlavery Petitions - John Calhoun |
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| I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good |
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| Speech in the Senate on AntiSlavery Petitions - John Calhoun |
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| I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other. |
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| Speech in the Senate on AntiSlavery Petitions - John Calhoun |
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| Be assured that emancipation itself would not satisfy these fanatics—that gained, the next step would be to raise the negroes to a social and political equality with the whites; and that being effected, we would soon find the present condition of the two races reversed. They and their northern allies would be the masters, and we the slaves; the condition of the white race in the British West India Islands, bad as it is, would be happiness to ours |
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| Speech in the Senate on AntiSlavery Petitions - John Calhoun |
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| I heartily accept the motto, — "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. |
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Definition
| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. |
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| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| The American government - what is but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity |
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| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| IT does not keep the country free, IT does not settle the west, IT does not educate |
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| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| Trade and commerce, if they were not made of india-rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way |
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| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus,(7) etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. |
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| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. |
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| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it..Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. |
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| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| Woman in the 19th Century |
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| Address to the Women's Rights Convention |
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| Speech to Woman's Right's Convention (And ar'n't I a woman?) |
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| The Philosophy of Composition |
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| My Kinsman, Major Molineux |
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| The Maypole of Merrymount |
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| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
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| Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass |
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| What to the slave Is the 4th of July? |
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| Address at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania |
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| What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? |
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| There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide |
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| Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. |
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| Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. |
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| I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. |
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| A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. |
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| What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? |
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| As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, 'Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey.' |
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| So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls...Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. |
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| Author quotes figures from the past, yet he says not to live in the past and not to conform to others |
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| If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for--business! |
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| Life Without Principle - Thoreau |
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| Nevertheless, as I do not need the police of meaningless labor to regulate me, and do not see anything absolutely praiseworthy in this fellow's undertaking, any more than in many an enterprise of our own or foreign governments however amusing it may be to him or them, I prefer to finish my education at a different school. |
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| Life Without Principle - Thoreau |
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| The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. |
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| Life Without Principle - Thoreau |
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| The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get 'a good job,' but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. |
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| Life Without Principle - Thoreau |
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| Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. |
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| Life Without Principle - Thoreau |
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| Of what consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about such events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up. |
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| Life Without Principle - Thoreau |
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| If we have thus desecrated ourselves--as who has not?--the remedy will be by wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a fane of the mind. |
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| Life Without Principle - Thoreau |
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| Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. |
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| Life Without Principle - Thoreau |
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| There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing |
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Definition
| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth - certainly the machine will wear out |
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| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already. |
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| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. |
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| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name - if ten honest men only - aye, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. |
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| Civil Disobedience - Thoreau |
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| The future complexion of New England was involved in this important quarrel. Should the grizzly saints establish their jurisdiction over the gay sinners, then would their spirits darken all the clime, and make it a land of clouded visages, of hard toil, of sermon and psalm forever. But should the banner staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine would break upon the hills, and flowers would beautify the forest, and late posterity do homage to the Maypole. |
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| The Maypole of Merry Mount - Hawthorne |
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| In short, the truth of the matter was Nippers knew not what he wanted. |
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| Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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"I would prefer not to," said he.
I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eyes dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. Hat there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there been anything ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it was I should have as soon thought of turningmy pale plaster-of-Paris bust of Cicero out of doors. |
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| Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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| It seemed to me that, while I had been addressing him, he carefully revolved every statement that I made; fully comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay the irresistible conclusion; but, at the same time, some paramountconsideration prevailed with him to reply as he did. |
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| Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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| Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up and lying on his side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby. But nothing stirred. I paused, then went close up to him, stooped over, and saw that his dim eyes were open; otherwise he seemed profoundly sleeping. Something prompted me to touch him. I felt his hand, when a tingling shiver ran upmy arm and down my spine to my feet. |
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| Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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| "I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not particular." |
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| Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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| All who know me consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing myfirst grand point to be prudence, my next, method. |
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| Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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| Now, what was ginger? A hot, spicy thing. Was Bartleby hot and spicy? Not at all. Ginger, then had no effectupon Bartleby. Probably he preferred it should have none |
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| Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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| As I afterwards learned, the poor scrivener, when told that he must be conducted to the Tombs, offered not the slightestobstacle, but, in his pale, unmoving way, silently acquiesced. |
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| Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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| Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. |
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| Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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| "I know you," he said, without looking round – "and I want nothing to say to you." |
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| Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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| was a whiskered, sallow, and upon the whole rather piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers – ambition and indigestion. |
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| Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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Ah, Bartleby! Ah, Humanity!
Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville |
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| You are not the head of your wife. God has given her a mind of her own. |
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Definition
| Woman in the 19th Century - Fuller |
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| Knowing that there exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves, such as is expressed in the common phrase, "Tell that to women and children;" that the infinite soul can only work through them in already ascertained limits |
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| Woman in the 19th Century - Fuller |
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| Man's highest prerogative, is allotted to them in much lower degree; that they must be kept from mischief and melancholy by being constantly engaged in active labor |
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| Woman in the 19th Century - Fuller |
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| What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded, to unfold such powers as were given her when we left our common home. |
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| Woman in the 19th Century - Fuller |
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| Let it not be said, wherever there is energy or creative genius, 'She has a masculine mind.' |
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| Woman in the 19th Century - Fuller |
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| accidentally or transiently, that is, for the sentiment will vary according relations in which he is placed? The lover, the poet, the artist, are likely to view her nobly. The father and the philosopher have some chance of liberality; the man of the world, the legislator for expediency, none. |
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| Woman in the 19th Century - Fuller |
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| If the negro be a soul, if the woman be a soul, apparelled in flesh, to one Master only are they accountable. |
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| Woman in the 19th Century - Fuller |
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| Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire. |
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Definition
| Maypole of Merry-Mount - Hawthorne |
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| ot far from Merry Mount was a settlement of Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight, and then wrought in the forest or the cornfield till evening made it prayer time again. |
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| Maypole of Merry-Mount - Hawthorne |
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| Often, the whole colony were playing at blindman's buff, magistrates and all, with their eyes bandaged, except a single scapegoat, whom the blinded sinners pursued by the tinkling of the bells at his garments. Once, it is said, they were seen following a flower-decked corpse, with merriment and festive music, to his grave. But did the dead man laugh? |
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| Maypole of Merry-Mount - Hawthorne |
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| From the moment that they truly loved, they had subjected themselves to earth's doom of care and sorrow, and troubled joy, and had no more a home at Merry Mount. |
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| Maypole of Merry-Mount - Hawthorne |
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| They went heavenward, supporting each other along the difficult path which it was their lot to tread, and never wasted one regretful thought on the vanities of Merry Mount. |
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| Maypole of Merry-Mount - Hawthorne |
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| This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. |
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Definition
| What to the Slave is the 4th of July - Douglass |
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| The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation's history — the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. |
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Definition
| What to the Slave is the 4th of July - Douglass |
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| I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! |
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Definition
| What to the Slave is the 4th of July - Douglass |
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| I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgement is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. |
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Definition
| What to the Slave is the 4th of July - Douglass |
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| At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed..For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. |
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Definition
| What to the Slave is the 4th of July - Douglass |
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| What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. |
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Definition
| What to the Slave is the 4th of July - Douglass |
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| Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. |
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| Address at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - Lincoln |
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| that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. |
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| Address at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - Lincoln |
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